Story of Good Threads and the Joan Rose Foundation

I had always been aware of how lucky I was to be born into the situation that I was born into, 2 parents with financial means.  I was also raised to believe that if people worked hard and made good decisions they could find success in the world.  When I was in 9th grade I saw a movie in school called Pixote about Brazilian street kids, all the actors were real street kids and all of them died before the age of 21 in real life, it was a super disturbing film and after seeing it I told myself that I would one day do something to help. Upon graduating from college in 2008 I lived in Ecuador, Brazil and then the Dominican Republic. During this time I had two goals, to have some worthwhile adventures and learn about poverty and the different approaches to help children in poverty. I worked odd jobs and interviewed everyone I could to learn about development work and the best approaches. I had originally planned on starting an orphanage but learned that most orphanages are full of children who have parents or some family.  In these cases the parents or family member are generally very poor and so give the child to the orphanage.  I decided it was more effective to try to bring resources to the homes instead of taking the child out of the home due to a lack or resources.  It was far cheaper on a per child basis and I thought healthier for the children as they got to stay with their family.  I searched all over the city of Santiago and the neighboring cities for months for a piece of land that met my requirements. I eventually found one and used almost all my savings to purchase land and a building that could be rehabilitated into a foundation.  I asked everyone I knew for funding and put together 25,000 dollars or so.  We rehabbed up the foundation and opened its doors in October of 2010 with 43 children.

This is around 2013 when we had added two new classrooms and basketball court that you can just see a piece of in the bottom left corner.

Foundation Backyard when we bought the building

After I cut down the brush and trees

To choose the original 43 kids I contacted local public schools and neighborhood organizations to get a list of about 140 kids. I think went to all their houses with a check list of poverty indicators that they couldn’t hide. I at first chose the children who were poorest and put less emphasis on the quality of their parents and their drive to change their circumstances The experience of choosing kids like this was a bit miserable as I had to tell 100 very poor people that they just weren’t quite poor enough.  In hindsight using their level of desperation as the primary criteria not the best way to choose kids was not the wisest or best approach as you cannot help somebody who does not want to help themselves. We learned to put more emphasis on how badly the children and parents wanted to be part of the foundation and less emphasis and just how poor the child or family was. We would give the kids 3 meals while they were with us from 11-4 Monday-Friday.  We would also provide reinforcement classes in reading and math and ensure the children were attending public school. When we started average child at the start gained about 7 pounds in the first 6 weeks from the extra food they were getting at the foundation.

In front of each kid is what they would eat in a normal day at the foundation.

Yuben when he started in the foundation

Yuben after a few months

Yuben Happy

We quickly grew to have 100+ children and got some great publicity from Primer Impacto, Spanish news, who made a special on us that they aired in every Latin Nation and US state for years to come.  We also got a front page article in the Detroit News. We were working hard to help our children while they were at the foundation but we had super minimal influence in their households. Some moms would send their daughter or sons to work in the fields instead of sending them to the foundation or school. Others would keep their daughter’s home to do laundry and other house work and we would lose some kids due to their parents moving in search of work.  Our kids were also being traumatized due to the lack of income at home and the problems that brings. I knew that if we were going to help our kids long-term we needed to tie the parents to us with a job. People may or may not believe that education can make an influence on their child’s life trajectory but everyone understands the value of income.

Above are pictures of Yuben, a prime example of the problems caused by not having any influence at the children’s homes. Yuben aka “the Hulk” was one of my favorite kids, he was very quiet, very poor, smart, a massive eater, not a trouble maker but also absolutely fearless when one of the other kids did step to him. The Hulk would take all on all comer’s, regardless of age or size. He was not one of the original 43 but joined the foundation very early on.  He was there for a few years before his dad took him to another city in search of work. After a few months he came back with Yuben. I still remember how happy Yuben was to be back, the first couple days he would not leave my or Catherine’s(my partner at the time) side. After a few days he started smiling and became a very happy kid. Unfortunately, a month or two later his parents again took him and moved away in search of work. Knowing how sad that must have made Yuben and what life held for him was heartbreaking. I had nightmares about him constantly for along time and still have nightmares about Yuben to this day. Yuben was not the only child who I loved and loved me that we lost due to a lack of income at home. Loving a child and knowing that they have been put in horrible circumstances with little hope of a better future is hard knowledge to bare. I knew that I needed to find a way to employ the parents, which would tie them to me and help us to stop losing kids.

I heard about needlepoint belts, how long they took to make and how expensive they were, and I knew I had the solution to my problem. I taught a few people I had known for a while how to needlepoint with youtube videos and an example of the competitions belt.  My original goal was to make the business big enough to employ all the parents of the kids at the JRF. We long ago hit that goal and now I hope to one day have over 1000 employees in Jacmel, we currently have about 280.

I started the business with my younger brother, who at the time was doing a private equity finance job that he hated.  He took on US Sales and operations and Good Threads was formed.  He worked with the company for a bit over a year before leaving to join the Navy SEALS in 2014.  I managed to hold on without help for about a year before finding a US Sales rep to join the company.

During 2014 and into 2015 the Dominican government changed its policies towards Haitians, both legal and illegal.  The Dominican economy was not doing well and Haitians were blamed, stoking animosity towards Haitians from Dominican society. By 2015 in Esperanza, where we lived, the Dominican government was driving around looking for Haitians on the streets and if they didn’t have papers they would get put in a van an sent to Haiti.  These types of deportations had previously occurred a few days a year, by January of 2015 they were happening 3 or 4 days a week. At that point about 95% of the children at our foundation were Haitian. It had become clear to us that Haitians were not about to be accepted in the DR as more than field hands, construction workers and maids.  We had higher hopes for our kids and so bought some land in Haiti and moved our 23 core families, about 130 people, from Esperanza, Dominican Republic to Jacmel, Haiti.

We decided to move in February 2015, started construction in early July 2015 and moved the families in late August of 2015. I had to loan the foundation every dime I had and during construction we were seemingly constantly on the verge of running out of money. Finding land, navigating the government system, building 12 different buildings and moving 130 people in just a few months time was a monumental task that I do not even know how we accomplished. It was the right choice for us in my opinion, even though Haiti is a hard place to live and do business.

Shortly after the arrival a single mother of 5 who came with us died of AIDS.  My partner at the time and I were not looking to adopt children but it was either take them into our house or put them into some hellish orphanage and so we took them in.  It was easily one of the best decisions I have ever made. My ex partner now lives somewhere else but I am still in the process of adopting the 4 boys.  One of the 5 was older and chose to live in the foundation housing, he stitches belts.

Neri With Nelson-2014

Williamson, Nelson, Wilgens, Yubensly-2015

The boys May 2020

Today Good Threads employs almost 300 people when we are at our busiest. Our stitchers, none of whom have graduated from high school, are making as much as nurses and teachers. They get 15% of any profits the company generates and we give 2% of revenue to the Joan Rose Foundation as a donation. We are a certified B-Corp.  I have a solid handle on production, fulfillment, doing good and the administration of the business. I am weak when it comes to marketing and the company is also relatively weak when it comes to marketing.  With increased marketing and distribution, we can continue to improve the company and offer even more hard-working Haitian women the chance to work with dignity and escape the cycle of poverty their families are stuck in.