“Love is a gift from God. Our mission is to provide essential hygiene items to people experiencing homelessness.” — Erika Wright
Erika Wright is the founder and lead organizer of U First, a grassroots nonprofit organization that focuses on giving to those who don’t have access to basic necessities. She started U First (also known as Project U First) in 2014 with coordinator Pamela Berry to provide items that many of us take for granted every day.
Homelessness is something that more than 500,000 Americans are currently facing. Wright began to take notice of how people experiencing not having a home and the struggle to live with basic dignity. She noticed a woman under a bridge struggling to wash her hair one day, and Wright “immediately knew her purpose in life.” She invited the woman into her church and started to leave items for others who would visit as well. A community began to grow, but Wright and her team noticed they weren’t getting to as many people as they wanted to reach.
Wright and Berry began to hit the streets in search of people who needed essential items and created what they call “love bags,” which contain basic hygiene products, food, water and other supplies that people need on a day-to-day basis.
She recently completed a nine-day tour, traveling from Atlanta to New York City and handing out more than 10,500 bags, 500 pairs of socks and 2,200 sanitary masks. When asked how she handled the planning of such an undertaking, Wright replied: “The mindset started when we realized that there were people all over the world, not just in Atlanta experiencing homelessness. Even when visiting someplace or on vacation, it’s everywhere, so we decided to take a road trip.”
From there, U First began to network with other cities and nonprofits. Wright and her team have been working with shelters to determine the specific types of supplies their facilities need and their capacity. Doing this, she’s also been able to learn how other organizations and shelters do things, giving the team new perspectives.
U First has been recognized on Atlanta news station WSB-TV and by Tyler Perry, who donated a brand-new 2020 Ford Cargo Transit Van to help make managing long hauls easier. Wright also has received the Martin Luther King: True to the Dream Award, presented by ShareCare and the Atlanta Hawks, highlighting her contributions not only to Atlanta but to society as a whole.
Wright and her team have visited and distributed their love bags in 25 states as well as in Paris, France. Future plans for U First include becoming more mobile to help serve people on foot and also to have a central headquarters to maximize the organization’s impact. From a global standpoint, Wright realizes how Americans have easy access to hand sanitizers that many other countries don’t.
See Wright in action in the photo gallery below. To connect with Wright and U First, visit www.projectufirst.org and follow @projectufirst on Instagram.
Rolling out contributor Sterling Reed also contributed to this report.
