Deborah Koenigsberger
Founder and executive director of Hearts of Gold
Mother of Florian, 16, and Stephan, 14
"New York City has the second-largest homeless population in the country. Every 10 minutes, another family is on the streets. Hearts of Gold's mission is to enhance the lives of homeless moms and their kids. I get calls all day from social workers at the shelters, and the requests vary. One might be about a mom who arrived with her 3-year-old daughter the night before because of domestic violence—how they have no clothes, because they ran out of their apartment with whatever they were wearing at the time. If I get that call at 10 a.m., then by noon they'll have coats, shoes, hats, gloves, and scarves. I want to have an immediate impact, because for these struggling moms and kids, everything else is about waitin—welfare lines, or sitting at the Emergency Assistance Unit for 48 hours, waiting to be assigned to a shelter. With Hearts of Gold, there are no lines or paperwork. If we get a call today, we start the process today. To the moms I meet, I say, 'This is not your life. This is a moment in your life. You have to treat it like a moment, because if you own this and call it your life, it will be your life. You can get past this.' "
See how you can join Deborah Koenigsberger and all the current and past Smart Cookie honorees in making the world a better place at ChangingThePresent.org/cookie.
