We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Charlotta “Lotta” Sjoelin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Charlotta “Lotta” , thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
In 2014 a friend mentioned to Charlotta (‘Lotta’) Sjoelin that the local homeless shelter for women and children, HomeStart, could use some pillows. Shocked a shelter would not have pillows, she visited with pillows in tow to donate, and was even more shocked to see the bleak condition of the shelter. A homeless shelter is supposed to be a place to transform one’s life, yet the physical environment Lotta saw was depressing, not inspiring. Deeply saddened by the living conditions available for the homeless, she went home and cried… then got to work! Emotion and action combined are powerful tools.
An interior designer by trade, Lotta had a vision of transformed rooms that would create safe, dignified and inspiring living spaces for the residents. Teaming up with the non-profit that ran HomeStart to act as a fiscal agent and accept donations, the Inter-Faith Council, Lotta began asking friends and others to ‘Donate A Room’ by pledging only $500.00 to transform a bedroom. Adding to that monies she raised from explaining the conditions to businesses such as Home Depot, World Market, IKEA, Sherwin Williams, and other big names, she began redoing one room at a time.
Not surprisingly the enthusiasm and support grew! Lotta tirelessly told anyone who would listen about the needs of the shelter, and like her, people were genuinely surprised by the need and wanted to help. Larger donations for common living rooms and children’s play spaces inside and out, gardens, etc. came in, as did donations of time of people volunteering their time to do the work. In addition to individual involvement, organizations also volunteered money and time such as churches, schools, sororities, and businesses. Clearly a movement was afoot…
Began as ‘Donate a Room’ in 2014 to support HomeStart, the only women and children’s shelter in Chapel Hill, NC, in 2015 the name changed to ‘A Lotta Love’ as the organization grew and people were donating more than a room. A perfect name for the group, A Lotta Love honors the founder, Lotta, as well as describes the motivation driving all those who so generously get involved. Love is a powerful agent of change. A Lotta Love is now it’s own 501C3 Non Profit organization.
Charlotta “Lotta” , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
When Lotta Sjoelin moved to Chapel Hill NC, she and her family found home; at least home away from home. Swede by birth and origin, pursued careers that opened doors for her to experience many cultures. Lotta and her husband Anders and their three children found their home away from home in Spain, Brazil, Switzerland and then the US, first in Connecticut and then NC. Since moving to Chapel Hill 17 years ago, the Sjoelins have settled into the community. They have embraced the beauty of living fully here while enjoying their part-time homes and families in Sweden and Denmark.
An interior designer by trade, in 2014 Lotta had begun considering how to take her work in a new direction. A chance conversation with a good friend paved the way for Lotta to use her design expertise and her heart for community service in a way that has slowly and surely transformed mindsets, lives, and hearts, one room at a time.
“My friend Myrah said, ‘You work with interior design. Go to the shelter. They need pillows – bed pillows for children to sleep on every night.’ So, I filled the car with pillows and drove to HomeStart. I peeked down the hall – it was so sad, so bleak. That was in June before we left for Sweden. When we returned, I went back to HomeStart for a tour. It looked so sad and institutional- bare walls, metal beds, no lamps or side tables. It looked and felt almost prisonlike.
Lotta returned home that day and wept. She also came up with a plan. “I went home and pulled out things I already had in storage. I went back the next day and asked to do a room makeover. The manager at that time gave permission. It was in the emergency building where they house women with no relatives. I got to work.”
Lotta took a drab, barebones, dimly lit room, and gave it new life. She painted the walls, and made each bed with new sheets, blankets and fresh pillows. She added décor including throws, rugs and a few touches of art. She outfitted the bathroom with new towels and washcloths for each resident of the room, a shower curtain, and a bath mat. A small table and lamp by the beds made the biggest difference.
As she worked, a young woman walked in and asked what was happening. It was one of the residents of that room. Lotta told her she wanted to make it nice for her, and suddenly the young woman, near tears, asked to hug Lotta. “She had gotten sick, lost a job and been homeless, living in her car before she came to the shelter.” For the first time in a long time, this young woman felt loved, felt safe, felt respected, and left with a bit of hope. “To be able to come in from work and read in bed because there was a lamp- it was a small thing that provided such a huge difference. It felt like coming home for this young woman, for the first time.”
After the first room redo, Lotta was inspired to go further. “Then I called two friends, an artist and a non profit person, and I said I need your help. They donated the first two rooms and have been involved ever since. We started with the bedrooms and I asked friends for $500 donations. IKEA was the first company I reached out to and they donated the first common room – the teen room. That $500 covers paint, lamps, art, bedding, mattress cover, bathroom linens- everyone deserves new towels- and best of all, the clients take their bed and bath linens with them when they leave.” We still use the donate a room for $500 system. It’s been a great business model for us!
Friends and family joined in. Then Lotta reached out to her designer friends. “People are so generous around Christmas, and we had groups wanting to do rooms. By that Christmas, all the rooms at Home Start had a makeover.” It wasn’t just the generosity of friends and community bringing light to the shelter. Many companies donated or helped with discounts. Today we work with big companies like “Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn Teen and Spoonflower who donate new items that have not been sold. We partner with companies like Publix and Lexis Nexis to send larger groups of volunteers when needed. It was wonderful to take those new things and make a home for the residents of Home Start. Items that have not been handed down but are new, fresh and beautiful! For once, these families deserve new! Since that first room, we have done landscaping and added gutters on all buildings, added a new playground with artificial turf, rebuilt the vegetable and fruit garden that we replant spring and fall. All with the help of partnerships and volunteer groups. HomeStart is far from prisonlike anymore. We also host our famous Christmas party every year for the children and their parents.
Next, Lotta reached out to the Wrenn House in Raleigh. “The Wrenn House is a safe house serving children with no parents aged 10-17. It was in shambles. Our goal was to make it more healthy and safe. A grant from the Women’s giving network of Wake County dedicated to mainly renovations, turned into a designer’s dream when all the contractors decided to donate their renovations in kind! The Wrenn House serves family-style dinners, so we got the grant in November, and we started with the dining room.” The room went from drab and disorganized to fabulous with new paint, a beautiful handmade slab dining table, some organization, and a family atmosphere created with color, furniture and “a lotta love”. “It was just before Christmas so we added holiday decorations to the table and around the room. We go back each year before Christmas and decorate. We leave three sets of new bedding for each room so children will always have a freshly made bed when coming to the Wren House, sometimes in the middle of the night. We go in periodically to spruce things up and to keep it beautiful and safe. If you have to leave your child to stay at the Wrenn House, you know it looks and feels good and safe.
Lotta works full time with A Lotta Love. Over the last five years what began as a heartfelt “room makeover on a whim” grew to be a volunteer group called Donate a Room, then evolved to A Lotta Love, a 501 c3 nonprofit, all-volunteer, organization.
Many groups around the Triangle have gotten involved and many return each year to volunteer. “They fundraise then come in as a group and volunteer to do the work. Alpha Chi Omega has volunteered for several years. We work with Durham Academy and have students from all Chapel Hill Schools coming out to do good with us. Awareness is a big part of what we do. To let people know that we have women and children homeless right here in our beautiful town. This is a perfect business model for a team building event, a bonding experience for a company to be involved together on a transformation, not only of a room or space but of lives.”
For Wrenn House and Project Home Start and 20 plus shelters in central NC, A Lotta Love circles back around and refreshes linens and bedding and décor as needed. “Each project is need-based. We want the space and the furnishings and linens to be new and fresh. We want to teach each family that respecting your things is respecting yourself. They are proud of their room. We love being with a family when we do a reveal- they are seen and recognized- it’s amazing.”
“We have changed the mindset of the shelters and the perceptions, as well. They don’t want to go back. They are proud of it now and see the difference it has made.” Our awards in recognition of our work is an extra bonus and give us credibility as a nonprofit.
Most shelters are run without Federal funding, and they are kept open by private donations alone. While many generous people have taken the time to donate much-needed items, Lotta realized that often donations are cast offs, old and out of date. The shelters had become as depressed as the situations that often bring people to be sheltered there.
“A Lotta Love’s mission is to empower women and their children to reclaim their pride while living in this temporary environment. Through donations and volunteers, we can breathe life into these sterile rooms and give them ‘a home away from home’. We design rooms individually with the receiving family in mind. When they leave, they bring their rooms with them.”
Lotta and her board and volunteers also work to raise awareness about the alarming statistics surrounding homelessness by reaching out to schools, universities, companies, congregations, and citizens. “Raising awareness is such a big part of what we do. We let people know that we have children living under bridges, that 25% of Wake County children don’t sleep in their own bed.” With research to back what they do, how they do it, and the long-term results, “We are proving that what we are doing is working.”
Besides A Lotta Love Chapel Hill, there are currently chapters in Durham, Charlotte, Raleigh, and Wake Forest. “We want to spread circles on the water and inspire others to start chapters of A Lotta Love.” Come Help us do good!
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
A Lotta Love’s mission is to transform shelters and crisis centers by creating safe, dignified, and emotionally inspiring spaces. There is no doubt in my mind that we are affected by our surroundings and our physical spaces, like our homes and workplaces. So for me seeing women and children, who’ve been through so much trauma, being housed in what oftentimes look like prison cells at the shelters and crisis centers across NC, was shocking to me. There was no understanding or focus on how they were housed. They got a room and a bed and old worn, hand-me-down bedding. That’s it. Why didn’t they see that these families need a place where they can feel safe and where they can start to heal from all the trauma they have faced with? Not a bare room with bunkbeds.
A few years in, we decided to start measuring the effect of our work, and for two years we did. I’m beyond proud to say that the results turned into a research paper. “The Impact of Trauma-Informed Design on Psychological Well-being in Homeless Shelters.” is now accepted to be published in American Psychological Association.’s medical journal!! We did prove ourselves right!
What started as one room makeover at a shelter has changed how people, both staff and clients, look at shelters and crisis centers at the shelters we work with. They also understand that Trauma Informed Design is not about “making rooms pretty” it’s about improving mental health.
This is something we need to see at ALL shelters and crisis centers across the country. We have a model of how this can be done and we’re more than willing to share our knowledge and work to help spread A Lotta Love.
We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.
I met my right hand, Darliene Woolner, at a friend’s house just as I had started doing room makeovers at the local shelter in Chapel Hill. A Swedish friend who was struggling with Parkinson’s donated a room and wanted to help. She was wheelchair-bound and couldn’t come out to do physical work with me. She was so frustrated but wanted to help in my mission so she said:
I’m going to organize a luncheon for my wealthy friends and you can come and speak and they can write you checks. She put together a beautiful event, and the women came, wrote their checks, and left. One lady stayed on and we instantly bonded. She asked me: Lotta, what do you want from me? I said: Come help me! She responded: That’s exactly the answer I wanted to hear. From this day she’s been my right hand, part of my family, and a very important part of my life. She’s my extra mom and one of my best friends.
She was a constant support and a big part of A Lotta Love’s successes and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without her!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.alottalove.org
- Instagram: alottaloveinc
- Facebook: A Lotta Love
- Linkedin: A Lotta Love
- Youtube: A Lotta Love inc.
- Other: We’ve got lots of awards over the years, good press, and PR. and appreciate you f0r wanting to help spread the word about us and what we do! Please also check this video about what we do:https://youtu.be/W_5Ez0o86cw There are other videos on our YouTube Channel as well, about our research and partnerships as well as a story of a mom who got a makeover from us. So heartwarming!
Image Credits
A Lotta Love inc.