I Love Palm Beach
I Love Palm Beach
From Hardship to Hope The Power of Dressing for Success
Discover the extraordinary journey of women's empowerment with our special guest, Joanne Fletcher of Dress for Success, an organization that's been fueling the economic independence of women for over two decades. Imagine a world where every woman has the tools to unlock her career potential—this episode brings that world one step closer. We unwrap the story of how a modest inheritance sparked a global movement, now touching lives from New York to Nairobi. Joanne shares the nuts and bolts of Dress for Success's programs, from suiting women in confidence-boosting professional attire to mentoring them for sustained success in the workforce. She paints a vivid picture of the organization's heartbeat—the volunteers—and the lifeline they provide to women striding towards self-sufficiency.
Tune in for an emotional journey through Palm Beach, where hope battles hardship and triumph emerges. Hear firsthand accounts of women who've weathered homelessness and economic turmoil, like the tale of a courageous woman stepping out from her car into a classroom, then onto her career path. We also shed light on the immense support flowing to Florida's underpaid educators, bolstered by Dress for Success's community-driven initiatives. Our discussion peels back the layers on the varied beneficiaries of the organization's work, spanning eager high schoolers to accomplished PhDs, all united by a common thread—empowerment. This episode isn't just about transformation; it’s a celebration of the resilience ingrained in the fabric of Palm Beach County, a testament to the enduring power of community and solidarity. Please join us for our 10th annual "Style for Hope" Fundraising Luncheon as we honor our 2024 Style Icons, Tommy Hilfiger & Dee Ocleppo Hilfiger!
Email us at palmbeaches@dressforsuccess.org
Call us at (561) 249-3898
Hi everyone, welcome back to I Love Palm Beach. I'm here with Stephanie Co, my partner. Today we have the pleasure of interviewing Joanne Fletcher from Dress for Success, which is an older organization but still very powerful in today's workforce.
Speaker 2:Hi, joanne, yes, hi, good morning, and thank you so much, rebecca and Stephanie, for having me on. Yes, just for success, is one of our older organization. We've been around for over 25 years worldwide and we've been here close to 15 years in the Palm Beach area. We're one of the 154 affiliates that serve around the world, one of the world's largest and career employment centers as well.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about the history of how Dress for Success got started?
Speaker 2:Well, dress for Success, as I shared, was started over 25 years ago with a young lady who was left in inheritance by her grandfather and she took $5,000. She lived in New York and she started a program for women. She felt that women needed to be empowered. She wanted to invest that $5,000 and to grow it into other monies for herself, and so Dress for Success to help empower women. And we're still going strong almost 30 years later. We have affiliates. As a result, she decided to brand the organization and have other affiliates join her, and so, as a result, there's about 154 around the world. We had a worldwide conference last year and I had the opportunity to meet women from Auckland, from Australia, from Rome, london, nigeria, etc. So there, from all over the world. We have affiliates throughout the US as well, in other countries.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. Can you tell us about some of the programs and kind of what Dress for Success is all about? What they do?
Speaker 2:Yes, dress for Success, as I shared, is about empowering women to become economically self-sufficient. So we think the best way to do that is to dress the woman from the inside out. So what we not only do is with Dress and then we also empower them. So we have like job readiness programs. For example, we have a program called Road to Success. It is a six week program where we bring the women in. We have leaders who come in from the community. They talk to the women about their strength, because a lot of times women don't really know how strong they are. We help to empower them about what to look for in the workforce. We do mock interviews with them, showing them how to smile, how to give the eye contact. So we do a lot of that with the women. When they come in, we assign them a mentor and the mentor continues to work with them for a year. So they're in the program for six weeks but they have a mentor who actually stays with them for an entire year helping them out with finding employment, and most of them about 70% of them find employment before they even complete the six week course. We also have someone who comes in and takes their photo for their head shot. We give them a profile and help them to go on LinkedIn, because we feel that's one of the important tools to be a part of if you're looking for employment. So we help the women with that. We also have coaches who talk to them and if they need to come in as people, the coach they get that. So we give them like a multifaceted approach of how to find an employer, how to find a job. So that's one of the many things that we do for them.
Speaker 2:Once they find a job, we give them five outfits for the week, so we want to start the week off.
Speaker 2:We give them what is called an employment pack because we want them to be able to feel good about that first paycheck and not have to borrow from a family member. So we give them a lunch box with goodies in it. We also put a gift card in there from Publix to help secure them lunch for the first two weeks of their employment. We give them a gas card to help them with their gas for the first two weeks of employment. If they do not drive, we give them a bus pass to help them get back and forth to work, because we found that many of the women borrow money from their family members or friends in order to get lunch and to get back and forth to work their first two weeks. So when they get their paycheck it's already gone to that family member because they had to borrow. And then it becomes like a trickle domino effect where they keep having to borrow and pay back. So we want them to start off fresh and able to say this is my money and put it into the bank account.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. How do girls get, or women get, involved with this program? Is this something that they have to? I mean, you're obviously very generous to them. It doesn't sound like they have to pay to be a part of it. How do you get the support? Is it through the community, through the government?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. All of our services are free to the women who come in. We get a lot of our funding through grants, where we write grants. We get a lot of private foundations who support our organizations, our organizations, some of the banks also. We get funding through them, through their charitable arm. So we reach out to a lot of different grant tours as well as private foundations to get funding. But one of the bulk of our budget comes from fundraising. So I think it's a great time for me to share that. We have two fundraisers coming up. Well, one I'll talk about first.
Speaker 2:We do pop-up sales about four times a year and we make it anywhere from 30,000 to 40,000 with each pop-up sale. And a pop-up sale is clothing that we have donations where women can drop their clothes off on a Thursday by appointment only, because the rest of the week we're busy seeing clients. So Thursdays today that women can drop out their clothing. We do what is called inventory. We have a team of volunteers.
Speaker 2:Most of our work here is done through volunteers. We have a small staff but a mighty staff, but we have a total of five employees who work here, including myself, and the rest is through volunteers. We have about 100 volunteers or more who do all of the other things. So the volunteer come in and they sort the clothing out. So say you give someone something with the sequence on it or has diamonds on it, or some high-end blue jeans that they can't necessarily wear to work, or maybe a fancy purse? That is something someone in the community may want, but not someone going into the workforce.
Speaker 2:So we sort and separate all those things, we put them to the side and we hold on to them or put them in storage and hold on to them until we do a pop-up sale. Then when we do our pop-up sales, we invite everyone on our database, we put it on social media and we have people who come all day for, like, we do it normally for two or three days and so we have them come in and shop. We have one coming up which is going to be one day on December the 8th. It's on a Saturday. I hope that there's a Saturday. Is it the 9th or the 8th?
Speaker 3:It looks like it's the 9th for Saturday 9th.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for that, stephanie. So December the 9th I guess already dates going on but December the 9th we will have a pop-up sale for family and friends. It will start at 9 o'clock and that will be for, like, vips, circle of Impact, women who donate at a certain level. They will be able to come from 9 to 12. And then it's open to the community from 12 to 5 o'clock. So 12 to 5 o'clock anyone can come in and shop, get their holiday items that they need, pick up things and it's only going to be designer and couture items. Normally we do everything, but this particular one is a special pop-up sale we're having and so they can just come in and shop for designer couture, special items, not the norm that we normally do. So it's going to be very different and that's going to take place on December the 9th.
Speaker 3:Where's the location for that?
Speaker 2:It will take place at our boutique, which is 2459 South Congress Avenue, and we're looking forward and normally we have our pop-up, so there's a line already outside when we open, so we're looking forward to that again. Okay, we recently had one and we profited about $40,000. So that's a part of how we take care of our programs. So it's kind of like recycling and not really throwing anything away and if it's something that's really stained and we cannot use, or something that we don't think we can even sell possibly, but we think someone else can use it. We have four other organizations that we donate to and they help to utilize those clothing. So we throw nothing away. We donate to the Breast Cancer Center, we donate to the Salvation Army, we donate to the Haitian Ministry and we donate to one of the local women domestic violence centers. So we also because we get an abundance of clothing that is donated. So in order for us to, we sort and give so much to those organizations, so much goes forward For us, our pop-up sale and then the others go on our floor.
Speaker 2:We have our floor set up like a department store. All things are color coordinated and size coordinated. So we have all the skirts in one section on a rack in certain sizes. Then we have all the blouses on a rack, so maybe three racks of blouses, three racks of skirts. Then we have the pants I'm just trying to walk you through visually, since you're not here at the boutique and we have, like the pants, just like a department store, if you go in.
Speaker 2:And so the clients get a chance to walk around with a personal stylist who helps to suit them from head to toe. So the stylist help to pick out the clothing. They go in the dressing room. We have this large mirror where they can look and see and feel good. They walk, we give them the shoes. So we really dress them from head to toe. We give them the accessories, we give them the handbag, give them the shoes and again, like I said, we give them the five outfits. Once they land the job, prior to the job, we dress them for the interview, have them sit so they can feel comfortable and whatever they're wearing for the interview, and then we do a mock interview with them. So that's part of the services that we offer.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is a lot.
Speaker 2:Thank you. So I talked about one of our fundraisers that helped to pull our program together. The other one is our annual event, which is our ICONN award, and last year we honored Bachelor Mishka and we did very well. With them being our celebrity icons, we doubled our profits that we bought in over $225,000. That was kind of historical for us. We raised quite a bit from that particular event and so this year we're happy to say that we have Tommy Hill figure and his wife D O'Sullivan, so the two of them will be our icons for March 15, 2024 at the Craven Center.
Speaker 2:So we're looking forward to even the both of you coming out to support. So we have already opened it up online. Yes, we've already opened it up online and we already have this definitely going to be a sell out, because we just opened it on November 1st for people to purchase their tickets and already the tickets are coming, people are purchasing, so we're encouraging people to get your ticket early. We also have VIP tickets where you'll get a chance to meet them close and personal, upfront before the event starts. So we have that taking place as well. But this is the same the day the tickets have gone on sale. You can go on our website. To purchase our website again is just for success. Pborg.
Speaker 3:And, for those of you listening, the tickets are going to sell out fast. It looks like it's about $200 for an individual ticket and 350 for a VIP ticket, so it sounds like it's going to be a beautiful event. Before we go more into that, though, I do want to touch on the individual lives or an individual story, because at the end of the day, you know that's the most powerful part of it all is the transformation, the impact the trust for success has on people. If you're comfortable sharing, we'd love to hear a story about maybe one individual that went through your program.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, I'll share with you a story of one who kind of was. She spoke at our event last year where she was highlighted. She's someone who has four children and was living in her car for many months. She was able to finally get assistance through the county and was able to get on assisted housing and she moved into her apartment, was very happy with her and her four children and doing well. She came in for us because she had picked up another job to help continue the services for her children and the day that she had stopped by she was late in the evening.
Speaker 2:She stopped by to get an outfit to wear for the next day for her new job she was going to interview for and she got a call from one of the kids crying. Well, one of her young adult children said that they had turned the water off and now they're going to miss another day of school. So they were upset. The water's all, we won't be able to have school, we can go to school tomorrow, etc. So she was called. The water company was back and forth with them and it was a glitch in the way that her account system had been set up. So you cannot remove from the savings account. According to the water company, you can only remove from checking and she had sent it from her savings. So they told her that being that's once the shut off, you have to pay cash. You can't turn it back on unless you come into them and pay it via cash. So it's late in the evening. How's she going to go now to move the money from there to that? And she doesn't have time. So she came in, we spoke to them, talked to them and we wrote a check and they honored it and helped her to get her life back on.
Speaker 2:But she's someone who is now working, doing well. She started classes at Palm Beach State College and she we consider her as a success story. She's someone who went from sleeping in her car to get an employment. We also had another recent story of one who shared that how she lives out of her storage, how she has to go to the storage in the morning to drop off the clothing and then at night she takes it. No, she go to the storage in the morning to pick up clothing, but I'm not where the school. At night she goes and drops it back off because they sleep in the back of the van. So that's someone we were helping recently and she's someone who shared her story of how her and her children have been sleeping.
Speaker 2:So we do find that homelessness is taking place around the state of Florida. As you know, the rent assistance, home powers and assistance has really gone up and there are a lot of people who end up really sleeping in their cars right now until they can get help. So we try to help those women. We also found that the teachers don't get paid a lot, and you know that. So we started what is known as a teacher appreciation, and this year was our third year. But we invite the teachers in Florida school starting and we let them shop for clothing for that first day back to school to help them feel good about themselves. We give them gift cards Every hour. We have like Ring of the Bell and you can get a gift card to various stores that we know teachers like to shop, like Target, give them Starbucks, dunkin Donut, etc.
Speaker 2:We glad this year we had other vendors who kind of joined us to help give items to the teachers as well. We had old foods here, we had Chick-fil-A stop by. We had Truist Bank, we had Guardian I'm going to start name it. We had so many different vendors who stopped by to help the teachers and the teachers were so appreciative and I had one teacher who shared that she had been making 48,000 a year. She was almost homeless herself because she had three children. She left the workforce and started her own business as a realtor. Like the two of you, and because of the way the real estate is booming, she made like a hundred thousand in her first year doing the real estate yes so she left the teaching career and she was someone here who came to give back to the teachers.
Speaker 2:So she started her own nonprofit called TLC for teachers and she gave out gift cards to the teachers as well. So she's someone who said that she was in this teaching system for 17 years and she left making 48,500 and that was not enough for her to live and take care of her children. So those are just a couple of stories of what we've heard and how we've helped.
Speaker 3:Wow, thank you for sharing all of that. Last question on this topic before we get into the last bit of the interview who qualifies, or what is the criteria for someone to qualify, for the success or address for success program?
Speaker 2:That's a great question as well. Really, it doesn't. We don't do qualifications Anyone in need of services. If you're looking to change careers or you're looking to find a new career and you need assistance with any of that, you can come in. We help people from high school diplomas to PhDs. We even have what we help the students who are in high school, because you know that's a very questionable time that they're interviewing for colleges and different things. So right now we're partnering with Path to College and we have about 70 students who will be suited over the next few Saturdays. So they're coming in and getting suited. So we put things aside for them as well, because we know they're coming and some of them may be smaller sizes. So we help the high school students out now as well. So we do high school.
Speaker 2:We do people with high school diplomas, phds and I say PhDs because we had someone who went through our class last year. She had a PhD and she had been working from home and doing things to help out with her son, who was artistic, and so we referred her to the autism school here in Palm Beach and she landed a job and she's still working there. We recently gave her a scholarship to increase her skills because she wanted to take a class that could help her more with autism, and we pay for that. We also have a scholarship program where we help students who are trying to improve themselves academically so they can get back into the workforce. And so we had one student who just felt like she was always saying yes to everyone. She wanted to be more empowered. She now felt like it was time for her to go back to school, so we recently gave her a scholarship as well. We also have an interns who come over and help out as volunteers and we try and give them scholarships as needed also.
Speaker 1:Well, I didn't know that you did everything that you did, but here's our favorite part of the day. Are you ready, stephanie? Yes, no, go ahead, rebecca. Tell us why you love Palm Beach County.
Speaker 2:I love Palm Beach for the weather, the beauty, the beaches, the relationships with the people, the networking. I love Palm Beach. I just think that the people are very nice. They're very supportive of our organization. The weather is always perfect here, I think the sun's always shining. Some days there's rain, but those are good days because we get a chance to work when there's the right place. I love Palm Beach. I think it's a great place to live and work.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Joanne, for coming in. I'm sure you will see Stephanie and I. I will be bringing you a whole bunch of goodies. I'm in the process of a closet reorganization. I've got things with tags on them.
Speaker 2:We encourage you to do that. Just call, make an appointment, because we do it by appointment on Thursdays. Sometimes there's a wait list, but we get you in eventually. We encourage you to call. We're always looking for donations. I also just know that we cover from Martin County to Broward County. I don't think I said that, just Palm Beach. I live in Broward but I work here in Palm Beach and I love Palm Beach. So yes, this is from Martin County to Broward, just so you know.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you so much, everyone for listening and joining us for another episode of I Love Palm Beach. Thank you to our lovely guests Joanne Fletcher and Jess for success. Hope you guys have a great one. Take care, bye-bye.
Speaker 2:Thanks to both of you. Take care.