In 2013, as part of the planning committee for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, Marian high school student Hunter Maclean was committed to getting other students to turn their day off of school into a day of service.
She shared King's message of peace and community involvement on social media, distributed flyers and bookmarks, and bundled up for the MLK Day Rally and March through downtown Detroit. It was a typical January day with light snow flurries and a low of 3 degrees, and Hunter was glad she'd brought a hat and gloves since she was going to be outside in the cold for hours. She was chilly, but it was manageable because she was properly dressed. She was shocked, however, to find many of the people she was walking with were not. Many people had no hats or gloves. She couldn't shake the picture of children especially shivering in the street.
At the end of the march, hats and gloves were collected for the homeless, and Hunter turned in the small bag collected by her high school. "It wasn't enough," she recalls. "I didn't know how bad it was, how cold the kids were, until I saw them. I decided I had to do something more. I wish I could build a house for everyone, and it's frustrating sometimes to just be a teenager without power. But then I remembered what Mother Teresa said, 'We can do no great things, only small things with great love.'"
The "small thing" Hunter set out to do was to collect enough hats and gloves for every single homeless person in Detroit, every single year.
To meet her goal, Hunter founded
Warm Detroit and held a proper drive at her own high school. "Hats and gloves are small and you can find them for a dollar," she says. "Everyone can participate." And they did. Warm Detroit collected huge boxes of hats and gloves in just a few days. Hunter brought Warm Detroit to several other schools and collected thousands of items. Student volunteers personally delivered the items directly to missions and shelters throughout the Detroit area.
When Hunter went to college, Warm Detroit was taken over by her 15-year-old brother Gavin. He expanded the program from 6 schools to 20. More importantly, instead of just delivering items to shelters, Gavin reached out to schools in need. Warm Detroit now acts as the conduit between schools who have a surplus and want to help and schools who have a deficit and need warm items. Warm Detroit also works with the Detroit Public Schools Department of Homelessness and Foster Care to ensure their 3,000 registered students have everything they need.
The students at Warm Detroit are helping keep their neighbors warm, one person at a time.
