CLEARWATER, Fla. — Ahead of Pinellas County students heading back to school, the Homeless Empowerment Program is trying to make a difference.
Watch full report from Blake Phillips
"This event means a lot to us each year, they help us out with supplies and things like that, such as I just recently lost my job, so it would be hard to get things like that," says Honor Edwards, a parent who lives at HEP's campus in Clearwater.
Edwards and dozens of families received free essentials for their kids, including backpacks, clothes, snacks, as well as haircuts and sports physicals.
"The need here is tremendous; we have a lot of families that are living paycheck to paycheck. We have about 100 kids in the shelter today that are needing access to services, so having us here in the heart of the community is really important," says Ashley Lowry, CEO of HEP.
For moms like Edwards, seeing a smile on her kid's face makes all the difference. "When they do this program, he gets excited and he gets happy, but he's happy for anything, it could be a pencil and he's smiling."
"He just never showed up"
What started as a project to make a bathroom more accessible for 80-year-old Sharon Shomaker turned into a family paying for a job without seeing any work and discovering the plumber they hired had no business taking the job.
