Introducing our newest partnership with PATH: Making It Home. With our Bottle 4 Bottle Initiative, we’re teaming up with amazing organizations throughout California on a mission to end homelessness once and for all. Just wait until you see what our water bottles can do.
What is PATH?
PATH is an organization for those experiencing homelessness that goes above and beyond. While, of course, they offer valuable services like mental health and medical treatment, employment training, and benefits advocacy, what really sets PATH apart is that they actually build homes for those experiencing homelessness.
They began serving those experiencing homelessness in 1983 and since then PATH has constructed more than 1,200 housing units helping upwards of 8,500 people find permanent homes. Realizing that having a place to live is only the first step to ending the common cycle of homelessness, PATH also knows that it’s certainly the most important step in stabilization. After all, it’s tough to get a job (or do anything at all for that matter) without an address.
By taking the initiative to actually build homes, PATH is well on their way to creating a world where every person has a roof over their head. In their thirty years of growth, PATH now has 25 locations and works in more than 140 beloved Californian cities.
The Challenge of Building Trust
When someone finds themselves struggling with homelessness, they’re usually not the first to trust a stranger. Far too often, those experiencing homelessness get treated horribly, based simply on the fact that they happen to be homeless at this point in time.
The Outreach teams that hand out the water bottles are trained PATH staff members who work to connect people experiencing homelessness to services whether that be employment, housing, benefits ETC. By offering water bottles, PATH can use them as a tool to begin a relationship with those individuals.
How Water Bottles Can Help
Offering a homeless person a house right off the bat can seem, to them, too good to be true. And it’s understandable that they’d be wary of promises; Who knows how many times they’ve been let down in the past.
For each KOR water bottle purchased, we’ll donate a water bottle to a homeless organization and PATH is our newest partnership on that list. When you give a homeless person one of our durable, quality water bottles, you’re not only gifting them with water. You’re gifting them with something reliable they can trust.
Once that little bit of trust is built, PATH can move in from there. And by “move in”, we mean, move those experiencing homelessness off the street and into one of their permanent housing units or into other organization housing communities or apartments. When you think about it, it’s really incredible what a well-built and thoughtful product can do. We’re proud to be that product for PATH.
It’s obvious that PATH is an incredible program and it’s no wonder we wanted to partner with them. Landing, on average, 23 homeless people in homes every week - it’s crystal clear that these people are doing incredible work. This new partnership with PATH as part of our Bottle for Bottle Initiative is exciting because, with our water bottles, we’re building trust.
Keep an eye out for even more partners in our Bottle for Bottle Initiative and be part of the change by ordering your own KOR water bottle today.
