We recently connected with Jehu Leconte and have shared our conversation below.

Jehu , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I have spent a long time dealing with homelessness through my own experience growing up in Haiti. And again, while working as a shelter director after receiving my master’s in management and leadership. From my position as a shelter director, I felt helpless as I watched thousands of families pass through the shelter without making much progress. It was a heartbreaking circle, and I could do nothing about it but keep them comfortable whenever they returned to shelters. I knew I had to push myself out of my comfort zone to help them genuinely. I realized that merely providing shelter or affordable housing wasn’t enough. They could stop returning to shelters if they got better and stable employment, financial education to help them become smart about money, and above everything else, get mental and self-development support to build their innate resilience. Through my own story, I realized how much a better mental state and mindset was to persist and fight through the desolation of poverty and homelessness. Through research and have found that there were other programs like what I was dreaming about; I felt validated and, indeed, I was onto something. My idea to solve and change the homeless patterns for families wasn’t anything new, but my focus is entirely different. Most self-sufficiency programs tend to focus on youths or young adults; EDEN focuses on single-parent homes (primarily single mothers), where the gut-wrenching throes of homelessness are entirely more significant. Secondly, my vision included providing well-rounded self-development classes, which excited me more because I won’t simply offer courses for professional development but genuinely help heal each broken heart that passed through EDEN’s family.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I resigned as a shelter director amid the pandemic to pursue building the EDEN vision. EDEN helps families experiencing homelessness access a well-rounded intervention and stabilization solution focused on four foundational pillars: financial literacy, wellness, workforce development, and self-development. Hence, EDEN helps these families access financial education to make smart money decisions and courses to grow their professional life, improve their income earnings, and get their first jobs or secure internship positions. Our goal is to help these families break the cycle of homelessness and become thoroughly independent of the system to reduce the reoccurrence of family homelessness. EDEN also helps these families break the cycle of homelessness by providing mentorship and coaching sessions to help improve their mental health as they transform their futures. One thing that sets EDEN apart is our one-to-one focused mentorship/coaching sessions to ensure that the families we help gain that sense of belonging and build their resilience. We realize how much homelessness causes dire impacts on their mental health and can be the obstacle stopping these families from taking up that battle to change their situation for good. These few years of existence have already been dotted with tons of milestones. There’s so much satisfaction in seeing a family that lacked good financial sources find better job opportunities, build their savings and watch them speak up with purpose. There’s so much innate joy in seeing people begin thriving lives, not just existing.

Beyond that, EDEN isn’t just an organization; it is who we are. We believe in offering a passionate and dedicated service which is why we’ve gone to exceeding lengths to provide a holistic service that would guide underserved families experiencing homelessness and change their future for the better.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Losing my mother to cancer was one of my life’s most excruciating and awful events. But I also believe that EDEN keeps me forever close to her because it offers the opportunity to keep her dream alive. Mom was remarkably dedicated to guiding, nurturing, and serving others, providing selfless, passionate, and authentic help to those in need.

In her own words, “In all you do in life, learn how to serve one person genuinely because love and affection may be just enough to heal a broken spirit.” These words gave me the courage to resign from a stable and secure job as a shelter director. They’ve been the driving force, helping me remain focused on the EDEN vision as we strive to help just one more family build a better life.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

When EDEN first started, I gave all of my attention to the mental health component, which entails offering mentorship and coaching programs to the families we serve. But I soon understood that I couldn’t simply provide mental health support to these families without assisting them in making tangible changes. In addition, I realized how much these single-parent households lacked real support to succeed— better income potential, financial literacy education, and wellness support. Therefore, I had to return to the drawing board to expand on my vision until I came up with four foundational pillars, which I believe can usher in well-rounded self-sufficiency for these families.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.edenma.org
• Instagram: edenmainc
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edeninc/

Image Credits
EDEN team!