A Lotta Love transforms living spaces in shelters to transform lives

Launched by Charlotta "Lotta" Sjoelin, an interior designer, the group began by decorating shelter bedrooms, but its work is expanding. A Lotta Love also has won grants to rebuild playgrounds, create classrooms for kids and renovate dining rooms. Now, a Wake Forest chapter, its first chapter, also is at work, seeking corporate sponsors to support the renovation of several kitchens and bathrooms inside a Raleigh domestic violence shelter.

"In the United States, we settled and found our forever home. However, I often gravitated to friends who – like me – had moved from elsewhere; there's an immediate connection because you have lived the same struggle to acclimate to a new country," she tells me. "After I founded the Wake Forest chapter of A Lotta Love, these were the friends I relied upon to help me. We are an eclectic group of women; some are Americans but we also have Germans, Irish, South Africans, English, and Australians. I find it interesting that these women, many of whom had to make a home in a new place, are drawn to the work of creating homes for other women."

Here's a Q&A with Hewett:

I went to Homestart with Lotta, a shelter in Chapel Hill. I was immediately taken aback at how stark the circumstances were. I couldn’t imagine living there with my child let alone trying to rebuild my life.

While we were working on the room I learned a bit about the background of the woman who would benefit (identities are kept confidential). She had been made pregnant at fourteen and then turned out of her home. Just a child herself, she had come to the shelter with nothing but her baby.

Over the years she had managed to keep and raise her daughter who was now 14 herself and a straight-A student at school, and the mother was attending a nursing school (which was such a coincidence, a sign I believe, as my aunt had been a nurse).

When nobody else would help, the shelter had stepped in to break the cycle of despair. Now she and her daughter were on track to have a much better life.

After this experience, I told my friends in Wake Forest and they were moved to join me in creating a chapter. In January 2016 we re-decorated our first room in a Raleigh shelter for victims of domestic violence.

We could not do this work without the help of our volunteers – 20 strong now in Wake Forest – and our sponsors who donate to us. We were given our first set of tools from Jarco Supply in Youngsville and Brandywine Homes provided us with paint. Morgan Womble Group and Capital City Homes have also supported us.

We have also begun reaching out to community groups to get more people involved of all ages and walks of life. Two clubs of kids from Heritage Middle School (the Global Citizen Club and the Crafting for the Community Club) are making holiday ornaments to sell at local markets to raise funds, for example.

There’s more to do, however. The shelter is in desperate need of new kitchens and bathrooms, and this is work that requires more funding than we can raise through yard sales. Thus we are on the lookout for corporate sponsors who may wish to help.

Overall, A Lotta Love as an organization is maturing beyond re-decorating. All chapters are taking an integrated approach with shelter partnerships (encouraging shelters to teach life skills, organizational habits and provide other resources to help residents achieve long-term success). Efforts, led by Lotta, are also underway to research and understand both the spectrum of needs as well as how our work is helping the residents. Early results from this research are showing a marked difference in psychological well-being, feelings of safety and more.

One of the most powerful things is to walk into these newly decorated rooms to see signs of ownership; photographs in frames and children’s artwork on the walls. This is evidence that families feel like they have a home and not just a temporary place to stay.

Perhaps the most rewarding is to see how the transformations impact the kids. Some of these kids have been sleeping in cars with their mothers prior to coming to the shelter. They may never have had their own bedside tables let alone beautiful blankets, a rug, books, and toys. Suddenly they do and the smiles just melt your heart.

Lotta’s work on the Wren House, a shelter serving children 10 to 17 years old, is particularly moving. Thanks to generous donations, Lotta was able to re-decorate the whole residence, creating a room for children to do homework, a dining room for family style dinners, a home away from home.

All gifts are tax-deductible, and each bedroom costs $600 to re-decorate. There is also tremendous need to re-do the shelter’s six bathrooms and three kitchens, all of which are very old; our goal is to re-do these by end of the year 2019 and for these projects, we will need corporate sponsors.

Finally, we met recently with the family of Lauren Hugelmaier, a Wake Forest resident who was murdered by her husband last year. The family toured the shelter with us and we are working on a collaborative project in memory of Lauren; we will have more details on this to share soon.

Email caroline.m.hewett@gmail.com if you would like to help us.