Two Dorchester residents, Michelle Harrington and Patti O’Keefe, have organized a donation drive for teens and adults experiencing homelessness by hosting a “yoga celebration” on April 16th at the Artists for Humanity Building in South Boston.

The “Gather for Good” class will be led by the acclaimed Boston bodyworker and former owner of South Boston Yoga, David Vendetti.

Participants are being asked to give cash donations or gift cards in ten-dollar increments to support nonprofits such as Bridge Over Troubled Waters and Pine Street Inn, and also to create gift bags for the local community to distribute.

Harrington brought in Vendetti to lead the event and O’Keefe connected with Artists for Humanity for the venue, which is full of student art that will be for sale during the event.

The hosts, who have backgrounds in the nonprofit sector, separately started collection drives as ways to give back after experiencing events that changed their lives: Harrington lost her sister, Katy, to breast cancer and O’Keefe lost her daughter, Ellie, to an accidental overdose.

“This has helped my own personal healing process so much; to be doing something positive in my daughter’s name has been really helpful to me and my family,” O’Keefe said.

After meeting up and realizing their shared interest in giving back, they combined their efforts and founded the Katy and Ellie Collaborative to not only raise support for vulnerable individuals in Boston, but also to encourage the community to get involved with solutions. They view the springtime event as a way to extend the traditional time of giving beyond the end-of-the-year holiday season.

“I’m so grateful, because I’d been doing my charity for six years, and I felt like I was getting kind of stagnant,” Harrington said. “So when I met with Patti, we had so many commonalities, and so many things that we agreed on, that we really felt like ‘Let’s join forces. Let’s do more good.’”

During the ’22 holiday season, the pair raised more than $5,000 for teens at Bridge Over Troubled Waters, an organization serving at-risk youth. The idea for the yoga event, came about as a way to combine those commonalities.

“Our birthday is the same day but we love yoga and you know, she’s doing something to honor her sister,” O’Keefe said. “I’m doing something to honor my daughter.”

Before teaming up, Harrington and O’Keefe individual donation drives keyed on bringing necessities to those in most need of them.
“If a teen is able to buy an interview outfit, buy deodorant, they’re much more ready to get that job,” Harrington said. “But when they don’t have the clothes … it just takes a Target or TJ Maxx card to get them what they need to have the confidence to get out there.”

Both women found comfort through yoga and are now instructors themselves. They met Vendetti while taking classes at his former studio and began thinking that creating a fund drive around a class led by Vendetti would inspire participants to care for both themselves and others.

“He’s just one of those human beings who is effervescent and charismatic and knows how to catch other people in that vibrancy,” O’Keefe said.

A New York City trained dancer who after leaving school, Vendetti became a pilates and yoga instructor, then went on to study a type of bodywork called “structural integration.” He later managed yoga studios around Boston for eight years before opening South Boston Yoga, which closed after 12 years during the pandemic.

“I think what I like people to take away from a yoga class is to not take yourself so seriously,” Vendetti said. “And to know that wherever you are, whatever body you’re in, and whatever your level of strength is, that you’re miraculous. We don’t look at seashells and think, ‘Oh, this one’s not miraculous.’ We want that difference. If everything was the same, you’d be shopping at IKEA for a spatula.”

He hopes that people participating in “Gather for Good” will show that one doesn’t need a fitting angle to help another person.
“We can label ourselves and say, ‘Oh, he’s from a yoga perspective,’ or it’s from a charitable perspective, but ultimately, to me, it comes down to what’s a human perspective,” he said,“and realizing that sometimes some of us are just one or two steps from being homeless, and there’s almost nothing we can do to avoid it. It doesn’t make us any more or less of a person.”

Harrington and O’Keefe hope to successfully challenge others to look past social stigmas around homelessness by simply acknowledging individuals.“Even if you have nothing to give them, just looking them in the eyes and saying ‘Hi,’ that’s the biggest thing you can do,” O’Keefe said. “Because the worst case scenario is that they’re scorned, and at best, they’re ignored.”

And while losing two of the closest people in their lives was traumatic, Harrington says what they she and O’Keefe have made of it has spanned wider than personal healing.

“One of the key things that I would like to say is that we all have trauma, and we all have tragedy, and it’s how you turn it around that makes a difference.”

The Gather for Good yoga celebration will take place on April 16th from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and donations will support the Katy and Ellie Collaborative. The Artists For Humanities building is located at 100 W 2nd St. just a five minute walk from the Broadway MBTA station. For more information, visit projectellie.org and navigate to the Katy and Ellie Collaborative tab.