Charlie Hennessy was homeless. It hadn’t been an easy road for him.
Then, a kind person gave the Londoner their old phone. He stumbled upon free wifi and subsequently took one giant step towards removing the stigma attached to homelessness.
He created a Twitter account, and wrote a short bio: “#homeless but trying not to be. Looking for work. Will do anything. clean&sober for 6 years. On the up.”
It all started with a short tweet.
The viral tweet humanised homeless people all around the world. The reaction was swift and uplifting.
Within days Charlie’s tweet had been met with thousands of messages of love and support, donations of money and a permanent place for him to live and, most importantly, job interviews.
Someone even lent him a suit.
It took eight days for the world to see a person in Charlie. A person who deserved what others were lucky enough to receive in life. It took eight days to pull Charlie out of homelessness.
Through a series of simple tweets, Charlie rallied for a simple cause: kindness. Its effects pulled him out a dark place, and as Charlie hopes, a continuing flow of kindness might just do that same for homeless people everywhere.
We’ll leave you with this, from Charlie:
Top Comments
This feels like an orchestrated PR exercise
This is lovely, but we also need to be mindful that there is nothing
wrong with some people needing a hand out. This man is white, cis and
able bodied, by all accounts. Not all people on the streets can
say the same. Some people are not going to be able to lift themselves
out of the cycle and will always need help.
Are you saying people who are not white (apparently) straight males will always need hand outs? Even a homeless person, obviously doing their best is to be tutted at and reminded of their privilege. So it goes..
You assume he's able bodied? You don't know that..