In back of One team, an Instagram account that has more than 16,000 followers and that was created just three months ago, are Gonzalo Perales, Pablo García and Miguel Jiménez, who have just entered their thirties. These boys were kicking the streets of Madrid to discover the story behind each homeless person, with the aim of helping them escape their vulnerability. Through the social network, they decided to publish the profiles with a photograph, accompanied by a description of their work experience to connect them with entrepreneurs. A kind of talent showcase, made up mostly of men over 50, which not only covers the capital, but also includes other autonomous communities. They have already managed to hire about 10 homeless and the wheel continues to turn, with more success stories in sight.
“If you put them to good use, social networks can be very powerful,” says Perales. Four years ago he suffered from leukemia and his story went viral. People started following him on platforms and he used his convening power to give a voice to the homeless people he knew. He found that in a matter of days someone was offering to hire them, so he set up an association with Pablo García and Miguel Jiménez, thanks to the fact that a mutual friend introduced them because their personalities fit perfectly. “The same day I opened the profile on Instagram, we launched the website, hiring a man who was also on the street and who had a friend on Linkedin,” says Perales.
Right now they are in a phase of growth and business establishment, in the line of becoming a start up social that has a wide range of professionals, such as carpenters, waiters, communication directors or chefs. “There are profiles who do not have a suit, or an apartment, or transport. They need phone recharges and a purchase until they have the first salary. What we are doing is weighing what it costs to get a person out of a situation as fragile as this and the idea is that starting this fall we will be talking with various companies so that apart from hiring they can donate money or material during the transition ” explains Perales.
One of the people who celebrates his return to the job market is Iván, who recognizes that the addiction to alcohol, accentuated during confinement, led him into a dangerous loop. He lost his job and his apartment and saw himself on the street for the first time. He prefers to give a false name because he believes that he would kill his mother out of disgust if he found out about his reality: he has been sleeping on a bench in the Salamanca district for seven months. He was lucky because he ended up with a quiet group. “He was the youngest. If it hadn’t been for them, I would have died for sure, but it’s difficult to have a normal conversation and reason things out with those who have been on the street for a long time, and I didn’t want to end up like this. The first month I lost 30 kilos because I ate only two chocolate bars a day. I did not know about associations, I had no friends, I had lost everything ”, confesses Iván, a 39-year-old computer scientist, friendly and intelligent, who enjoys his role as a programmer. He has had to learn to survive by asking for or looking for books in containers that he later sold.
With the arrival of summer, he cut his hair, shaved, and was not so bothered. His head began to tell him that he had to go back. That’s when he met the boys from One team. “They do not help everyone, but those who see that they have something in there. They gave me a mobile phone so that I could do interviews and it has been difficult for me to get a job because in computer science a year without working is noticeable. I will join next Monday and I am very happy. I only need one room, which is complicated. Let’s see if I get it before I start ”, declares Iván, full of energy.
The census of invisible Madrilenians
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Every week these guys receive about 20 emails. Some of them are photographs of posters of establishments that are looking for personnel. Although Perales and García indicate that the best way to give them a hand is for those people who contact them to approach the businessman who has placed the offer to talk about the project, and it is he who calls them. “That makes our work much easier. The employer also receives something positive, which is very white advertising because the day they hire that person we publish the success story to our 16,000 organic followers. If we mention that bar then maybe people are going to have a coffee to thank them ”, both declare.
Another achievement has been that of RC, who has just found a job as an upholsterer of large displacement motorcycles in Cantabria. A profession that ensures is in decline and is little valued, but very laborious. She gives her initials because she doesn’t want her 17-year-old daughter to know that she has been ordering from Monday to Sunday at the doors of a market in Madrid’s Argüelles neighborhood for a year and a half. They live in an apartment with a room left by his father, who died of covid: “I am the fifth generation of upholsterers. My grandfather had 11 brothers and 9 were saddlers, those who make articles for horses. At the beginning of the pandemic, they evicted me from a workshop where I had been for 10 years and I had to sell my machines because I had no place to put them ”. There were days when I returned home with three or four euros, the good ones with a ticket. “I have lost 10 kilos of nerves and tension. The first four months he was not stinging an eye, not for me, but for my daughter. I do not wish it to anyone. Sometimes I didn’t eat for her. I asked for the Minimum Living Income and they denied it because they were charging 168 euros every three months for the girl’s orphanhood ”, he explains. RC At this moment he is euphoric, wanting to start a new life on the shores of the Cantabrian Sea.
Homeless people are invisible to the State Public Employment Service (SEPE). Is what the boys think of One team, who finally have an account number to receive the donations that defray the first expenses of those who leave the harshness of the streets. “It is proving that if we help each other this works. People are very generous ”, they conclude.
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