The founder of ‘Beauty 2 the Streetz’ non-profit organisation, Shirley Raines, has been crowned CNN’s 2021 Hero of the Year.
The Los Angeles-based charity worker was handed the award Sunday night by hosts Anderson Cooper and Kelly Ripa. Online voters selected her from among this year’s Top 10 CNN Heroes finalists.
Raines and her non-profit that started in 2015 have been responsible for, providing food, clothing, and hair and makeup services to thousands of people homeless people in the Skid Row district.
According to CNN, Raines and her team of volunteers set up shop and transform part of Skid Row — home to one of the nation’s largest concentrations of homeless people — into an outdoor beauty salon, every week.
She has also provided rape whistles, tents, sleeping bags, hygiene items and teamed up with local health officials to offer a range of essential services.
While Raines will receive $100,000 (as the 2021 CNN Hero of the Year) to expand her work, she also got a $10,000 cash award alongside others in the top 10 CNN Heroes honoured at Sunday’s gala.
During her speech at the award Sunday, Raines expressed gratitude to her children including her late son, who inspired her work.
“This surely hasn’t been easy. I stand before you a very broken woman,” an emotional Raines said. “I am a mother without a son and there are a lot of people in the streets without a mother — and I feel like it’s a fair exchange.”
“It’s not so much just giving them makeup or doing their hair, it’s also the physical touch,” Raines said. “People need physical touch. That’s what was hard when the pandemic hit. We had to stop doing hair, we had to stop doing barber services. And that might be the nicest touch they’ve had all day.”
“The world looked at me and thought probably the same thing they think about the homeless when they pass them by,” she said. “You never know what anyone’s going through, you know?”
Raines’ twin sister urged her to find a purpose for her pain. That purpose came in 2017 when Raines joined a church group on a feeding mission.
“I went to Skid Row, I’m like, ‘Oh, this is where all the broken people are? Oh, I’ve been looking for y’all all my life,” she said. “I never wanted to leave. It’s a place where people have amazing hearts, but nobody can see it because they can’t see the forest for the trees.”
