Get to know them, they do great work.
[Oli] Mohammed, a native of Bangladesh who has devoted his life to helping the poor, came to Houston after several years of working with refugees in Kenya.
“I’m from Bangladesh, and poverty and people in need are not foreign to me,” Mohammed said. “But when I saw the way some people are living in America … I didn’t expect it to be that bad.”
He worked as a housing specialist with the Mental Health Mental Retardation Authority of Harris County and in 1992 set out to find furniture for those moving from mental health facilities into government-subsidized housing.
It was a pilot project meant to serve 140 families. It worked, and within a few years, Mohammed proposed something with a broader reach: a furniture bank with partner agencies whose clients could all be served.
The partner agencies would buy vouchers and exchange them for gently used furniture for their clients. Just $250 to $300 worth of vouchers could buy the basics to fill a one-bedroom apartment: a place to sit, a place to sleep and a place to eat.
By 2003, the furniture bank had become an independent agency, a move made necessary by MHMRA budget cuts. All MHMRA could offer was warehouse space in exchange for furniture for its clients.
Mohammed and his nonprofit were living week to week when he heard that 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus would be in Houston for a lecture.
Yunus, a fellow Bengali, won the honor for his work founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concepts of social business and microcredit.
Mohammed asked his board of directors to join him at the lecture. They all left inspired to find new ways to not just stay afloat, but to thrive.
In 2008, they opened their first outlet center, which now generates about half of the furniture bank’s $500,000 annual budget.
It is open to the public as a thrift store with both new and gently used furniture. And it follows a social business model: its paying customers make it possible for Mohammed to provide for 1,500 families a year who cannot.
See here for more on the fire that set them back, but didn’t put them down. We’ve made some donations to the Furniture Bank in the past – it’s a great cause, and you know you’re helping people who need it. It makes me happy to see them back doing what they do after that calamity a year ago. Visit their webpage and learn more about them.