Hundreds Of Homeless have been Given a SEcond Chance

We're starting this year off with a great story - and we're taking you to Denver, Colorado for it. The Denver Day Works program was launched just over a year ago, in November 2016. Roughly 284 people worked at least a day, and about all of them stuck around longer, performing duties and assignments all over the city. Of course they are paid for their services - more than $12 an hour.

However, the real story doesn't stop there. Due to this, 110 of them found full-time work landing project-based city jobs and dozens more seeking out employment opportunities from other employers around the city. One particular man, Jeffrey Maes, spent four years living on the streets prior to landing a full-time job retrofitting lighting at Denver's Central Library. 

"When you take a good person (who's) down, broken, discouraged, and you give them an opportunity to be proud of their self — to stand up and do something for their self — that"s one of the greatest gifts anybody can give to anybody," Maes told the Denver Post. "And for that, I"d like to say thank you."

Denver's Mayor Michael Hancock has been a great asset to making this program work and states "[These results] shows what we've known all along — that people experiencing homelessness are no different from other city residents. They are hungry for the opportunity to work hard to achieve their personal dreams and to take their self-sufficiency in their own hands."

The movement will only gain momentum from here on as the Denver Day Works will expand this year by lengthening it's three-day work week to four, and getting even more departments of the city involved. We're excited to see the results and what this can bring forth.

Sources from here.