Homeless and living in a mission shelter, nothing to his name but the clothes on his back and a cell phone he’d managed to hold onto, Jameel Hamid had a friend tap him on his shoulder with a grand idea.
There was this cool place called Purposeful Design that trained men to be skilled wood craftsmen, creating handcrafted custom furniture. Hamid should really come see what it was all about, his friend told him.
At first, Hamid said he wasn’t interested. But his friend kept urging him to give one of the classes a try.
“I went to class the first day, and it was a good first day,” said Hamid. “All the people there were amazing, encouraging, nice, and real attentive to our testimony and what we were hoping to get out of the class. By the time I got done with the classes, I learned so much.”
A year later, Hamid is now a full-time craftsman at Purposeful Design, creating tables, benches, and other custom furniture for hospitals, universities, and major corporations.
The organization was founded about seven years ago to train and employ formerly homeless or incarcerated men, or those struggling with addictions, in furniture making.
“We wanted to do two things. One, create jobs for those in the city who don’t have one or might have a tough time getting one,” said Director David Palmer, “and do on-the-job discipling.”
Palmer was working with Wheeler Mission when he got the idea for Purposeful Design—a program that could create a job pathway for the men inside the shelter.
“Whether it was addiction, homelessness, incarceration, and all kinds of badly broken relationships, these are men who have found some distance from those things and are wanting to restart life,” Palmer said. “But there are all kinds of hurdles between them and their jobs.”
Purposeful Design hires men and trains them in its 28,000-square-foot facility. Lumina Foundation recently gave the organization a grant to help with that.
Once trained, some of the men continue as skilled craftsmen or managers. The furniture they make is sold to create a revenue stream to fund the jobs. Last year, 90 percent of the organization’s operating costs were covered by furniture sales.
In its first year, Purposeful Design did about $37,000 in sales. By 2019, that number had grown to an eye-popping $1.4 million.
“I consider it a gift from the Lord,” said Palmer. “Our hope is to help as many people as we can. The Lumina grant has helped with this in a big way.”
Hamid said he was certainly helped by Purposeful Design. Now 23, Hamid lives about 10 minutes from Downtown. He ran track in high school, so he’s taken up running again. He likes to read, do puzzles, and go to church.
And he likes to build. “I didn’t even expect this to happen, really,” he said. “I talked to God and I said, ‘You know what? If you give me the job, I will take it.’ Here I am.”
Learn more about Purposeful Design.