In 2015, National Geographic Society hosted an internal competition among its 1,300 employees; the challenge was to come up with sustainable solutions for our headquarter’s campus. The best ideas would be selected for implementation across the organization and receive funding from National Geographic. My idea, one of the recipients of the 2015 National Geographic Green Grant, was to engage the homeless community in DC to help the NGS campus “upcycle” our old magazines instead of throwing them away.

 

The idea for this project came from two different problems converging in my mind. On my way to work every morning I would walk past a homeless man named Antonio who would tell everyone who walked by him, “God bless you.” I would go out of my way to greet him and, in return, I would get a huge grateful smile from him that reached his blue eyes. I would give him loose change and canned goods when I had them but that never felt like enough. I wanted to help him and the many other homeless people I passed on the street everyday but I didn’t know how. After about a year of these exchanges with Antonio my team was told that we would be moving to a different part of the NGS campus. This resulted in weeks of clearing out, organizing and throwing away issues of National Geographic magazines. Though we were ultimately sending the magazines to be recycled it still seemed like a waste to me. During this time, I happened across a Pintrest posting called “magazine upcycling” which listed a variety of ways to make beautiful crafts out of magazines. I loved this idea but knew I had no time to make any of the crafts. This is when all three things clicked together: What if we donated our old magazines to some of the individuals in DC’s homeless community and taught them to make these crafts? They can make money selling the crafts and our beautiful magazines would get a new, prolonged life instead of being sent to be incinerated somewhere.

We started with a small group of women and made everything from baskets to bowls to jewelry. At the end of the year two women had become successful crafters and had made an accumulated $1,800. This experience inspired them in different ways. One woman decided to go back to school to get her GED and the other was planning on becoming a small business owner.