Homeless at Heart ("HAH") was started in Atlanta in 2015. HAH’s mission has always been to provide a great Valentine's Day for people who are homeless. We recycle old shoe boxes and use these and other types of containers to turn them into special packages for people who are homeless. In addition to the cards, the boxes typically include socks, water, toiletries, and non-perishable snacks.

The idea for this program originated with Charles Plyler, an 11 year old at the time, after he noticed a homeless mother and her children sitting on the street. He and his Dad had just attended an Atlanta Hawks basketball game and Charles told his Dad that he would like to make 5-10 boxes to give away for Valentine's Day that would be decorated and include a handwritten Valentine's Day card. His Dad encouraged him to get some friends to help him and make it bigger.

For our first drive, and with only 5-6 weeks to get organized, we set a goal of 200 boxes. Several schools participated in our first drive and we exceeded our goal by over 150 boxes. With an entire year to plan for the 2016 Valentine's Day campaign, we set a goal of 2,000 boxes. Over 10 schools participated and we collected about 3100 boxes, exceeding our goal again. We also received publicity in 2016 from Pebble Tossers, an organization in Atlanta that matches families looking for charitable service projects with charitable organizations looking for family volunteers. Through Pebble Tossers' efforts and other publicity in the Atlanta area, we also got great support from many families and other interested persons. Finally, we also got help fromMore Love Letters, an organization founded by Hannah Brencher; her followers write anonymous letters to people in need around the world and they orchestrated a special campaign for us at Christmastime and they sent us many handwritten Valentine Cards we used in our campaign.

For the 2020 Valentine's Day campaign, we plan to make 5,000 boxes and Valentine bags for distribution in Atlanta. In addition to our work in Atlanta, we partner with individuals in other cities to start campaigns in those cities. We are also excited about the special Valentine Day dinner events we have created over the last several years for various shelters in Atlanta including 7 Bridges to Recovery (women and children), Trinity Community Ministries (men recovering from addiction) and Wellspring Living (girls residential program for girls aged 12-17 who have been trafficked). We are adding City of Refuge (women and children and special trafficked women’s program) in 2020.

Our campaigns are normally funded by the gifts of boxes, bags and contents at the participating schools and organizations. Our school participation comes from all over the greater Atlanta area. Some of our larger relationship schools are Whitefield Academy, Westminster Upper School, Morningside Elementary, Ivy Creek Elementary, Atlanta Speech School, Haygood School, Greater Atlanta Christian, First Presbyterian Preschool, Immaculate Heart of Mary and our founding school relationship, Morris Brandon Elementary.

Our school relationships are a major driver of our program but we do solicit and need monetary contributions to fund the special Valentine dinners and to make other boxes and bags. We have partnered with The Packaged Good for the last several years to have a MLK Day volunteer event to create 2000 bags for many of the shelters in Atlanta and a large group of people who are not in shelters and are living on the street. We use much of the contributions for that event and it costs about $5 to fill each of these bagss with the contents we want to include. We have had a successful relationship with Dollar Days, a wholesaler, to get these large quantity needs at affordable costs.