Blessed By Blsd

It’s late morning Oct. 25, when Ann is greeted by several people outside of her tent in Kakaako, in what has become a growing tent city for Honolulu’s houseless. When the group hands her bottled water, CapriSun and homemade bentos, she breaks into a broad smile.

The group is volunteering with BLSD Project Hawaii, a hybrid of a clothing company and a charitable organization.

Ann (last name withheld for privacy) has been posted up in the tent city near Kakaako Waterfront Park for about a year — and now has a 10-month-old to care for. Her tent is one of dozens that serve as makeshift homes for a growing number of houseless individuals and families in the area — and the 70 or so volunteers (including a large number of ROTC students from Roosevelt High) with BLSD were visiting them all that day as part of their inaugural Feed The Streets outreach.

BLSD, founded by husband-and-wife team Kelly and Stacy Potes, runs on a TOMS Shoes model: For every shirt it sells, it donates one to a person in need, focusing on children first. In addition, BLSD also plans to conduct service events like Feed The Streets regularly. As its website states, “We have been blessed so that we can bless others.”

The couple had caught glimpses of the houseless community on their trips to Kakaako — where they frequent for events such as Honolulu Night Market and Eat The Street, and to visit the Discovery Center or slide down the nearby hill on cardboard with their children.

“We see this,” Stacy says, motioning to the tents behind her, many of which are filled with families with young children. “We see kids, and I just couldn’t turn away from it. I felt like something had to be done. There are a lot of times that I have seen it and just moved on with my day, and I just got tired of doing that.

“When you go to Eat The Street, you eat all this food and you’re so full. And then you drive past this area,” says Stacy, who teaches math at Leilehua High School.

BLSD products, which can be found online at blessed-project.com, include different types of shirts — crops, pocket tees and tank tops — as well as pins, hats and tote bags.

But at its core, BLSD aims to be more of a movement than an apparel company. The main focus for BLSD, which also is comprised of several brand ambassadors, is on its community service. Outreach efforts so far also have included distributing shirts at a food drive in Wahiawa with nonprofit Surfing the Nations.

“Yeah, we want people to like our stuff, but we want them to know the main cause of our company before anything else,” Stacy says.

They’re aware that not everyone supports what they’re doing — they were told they could not barbecue right there in the park as they initially had planned. And Kelly adds that he has heard arguments that feeding the homeless at locations like this is counterproductive because it may encourage them to stay put.

“But not everyone can find help,” says Kelly, a journeyman in the National Guard. “This is just one day when we can talk story and hang out with them.”

BLSD hopes that its idea catches on — and welcomes others to create their own Feed The Streets event with their own organization or group of friends. BLSD has some pretty lofty goals: Not only does it want the idea to spread locally, but also nationally and internationally. It already has had some progress on that front.

Brand ambassador Andrew Ahn recently was part of a religious mission trip to Dominican Republic — and he passed out BLSD shirts to children he met there.

“A lot of them didn’t even have a shirt to wear,” Ahn says, “so it was super cool to see all these Dominican kids repping BLSD Hawaii.”

For more information or to shop BLSD, visit blessedproject.com.