Knock Knock Give a Sock: Adina Lichtman

Adina Lichtman, the sock queen, joins The Five-O-One to share how she is working to humanize homelessness, donating socks, and encouraging New Yorkers to meet their neighbors on the streets.

To learn more about her organization, Knock Knock Give a Sock, visit knockknockgiveasock.org.

Talia: Let's start with the basics. Why socks?

Adina: Why socks… so a whole bunch of years ago I was a sophomore in college here in New York City, and I was giving out sandwiches with a couple of friends to our neighbors on the street. And one guy said, “Ma'am, it's so nice, you're giving out sandwiches. But one thing we could really use our socks.” I went up to my dorm room, I opened my door and I saw that my pink socks and polka dotted socks, were not going to fit my new friend Diego. So I very quickly decided to knock on every door on my floor, and in about 15 minutes, I got over 40 pairs of socks. Fast forward to my senior year of college, we actually spread to over 20 college campuses and collected over 50,000 pairs of socks. And that's when I joke that I actually became a sock celebrity and started realizing that I need to get all the socks out of my parent's garage, and so I became a 501c3.

Talia: So how did you grow to all those different campuses? You had student volunteers knocking on doors?

Adina: Yeah, so one floor was pretty effective, and then I knew like four or five other people in my building. So I was like, why don't I get them to collect socks on their floors. And then I started reaching out to some places on campus — drop off locations where people could bring the majority of those socks. I even remember I would go to the cafeteria and go over to random people and be like, “Hey, do you want to collect socks on your floor? Did you know that socks are the most needed but least donated article of clothing for people experiencing homelessness?”

Talia: Why is that? Why are why are people not donating socks in general.

Adina: So what's really interesting is, a lot of times when we think about our neighbors on the street, we think of what we would want, and what we think of is food, we think of coats, we think of blankets in the cold weather, water in the summer. But we take certain things for granted like socks. You don't think wow, I need socks on my feet right now, you're like I need another sweater, I need another coat. But for our neighbors on the street, they don't have access to washing machines or dryers. So the minute you have a big rainstorm, forget about it, those pairs of socks are wet, you can't wear them anymore. And also you get a lot of infections on your feet, especially if you don't have new socks to change into. So for all those reasons, socks are the most needed, but also least donated article of clothing. It's just not something people think about.

Talia: So what year Did you found your 501c3?

Adina: That was in 2015.

Talia: Okay, so 2015. We're now in 2022. How has the organization changed since those early days?

Adina: As Knock Knock Give a Sock was growing on campus, people would ask me to come speak in their college classrooms, and their churches, and their synagogues. We even started to have some corporate offices that collected socks in their office spaces ask me to come in and say a few words about it. And I would always say to the audience, “raise your hand if you've ever given money, food or clothing to someone in need,” and everyone would raise their hand. And then I would say, “who here can tell me the name of one person experiencing homelessness.” And almost no one could raise their hand. That was at a liberal college campus like NYU where everyone is super mindful of stigmas and stereotypes, but when it came to homelessness, college students would be like, “what you're doing is great, but aren’t most people who are homeless, choosing to be homeless? Aren't most people using drugs? Aren't most people mentally ill?” We don't even say the word mentally ill on campus anywhere. So all these stigmas and stereotypes around homelessness were just so prevalent. And what most people actually don't know about homelessness, is that out of everyone who's homeless in New York City, only 5% of our neighbors experiencing homelessness live on the streets, which means 95% are living in shelters, living in cars, or living in motels. And out of the 60,000 people who are homeless in New York City, over 25,000 are children. But when we hear the word homeless, when we think about the word homeless, we imagine the guy on the street corner with a cardboard sign.

Talia: Right…and many of these children who are homeless are still in the public school system,

Adina: Exactly, with everybody else. And so I really wanted to break this stigma around homelessness. So I figured the only way I could do it was if I were to bring 50 of my college classmates who would help me collect socks, and 50 people living in local shelters to have dinner side by side. So we put on one of these dinners on college campus, and nobody was allowed to serve anybody else food, but you had to sit next to someone that you didn't know before walking into that room. By the end of the night, we had college students saying we can't tell who's homeless and who's not. They were meeting moms who had three kids who couldn't afford childcare, dads who got out of prison and couldn't get jobs afterwards…And now homeless has had a name and a face and a story to it. After we started doing these dinners on college campus, I wanted to bring it more to the corporate space. And I wanted to engage companies like JP Morgan, Wework, Salesforce, Deloitte…I wanted to get these companies to collect socks in their office, and then afterwards, bring those who donated the socks and people living in local shelters to dinner side-by-side in their offices. And that's what I started to do once I started running Knock, Knock, give a Sock full time.

Talia: So you have partnerships with specific shelters in the city?

Adina: Yes.

Talia: And how did you create those relationships with those shelters?

Adina: I began those relationships with the shelters the same way I began those relationships with corporate companies. I would say, hey, can you collect socks in your office? And afterwards, I would say, hey, we want to engage your employees, and bring your employees to meet the recipients of the sock donations, and actually, we want to do it in your office, which at the time was very radical. And until we got that first company to do it, we were like, begging companies. Once we got that first one or two companies do it, the floodgates opened. So we were able to engage different shelters, by providing them socks by saying, hey, we want to give you 5,000-10,000 pairs of socks for your residents in your shelter. And then afterwards, I could then build that relationship with them and then say, hey, we actually have an opportunity for your residents to come join us for dinner, and meet some of their neighbors who are all working in these buildings all around you.

Talia: But I read somewhere that not only are you giving out socks to those living in shelters, but you've actually hired a few people living in shelter to help you distribute the socks.

Adina: Yeah, so we call that our Success Job Program. And for them to be able to help us and for us to be able to pay them is really great for one, their resume, two, their confidence, and three, to help give them someplace to show up to every single day. A lot of people don't realize that people who are experiencing homelessness, don't want to wake up and have nothing to do. They want opportunities. They want purpose like everybody else. One of the saddest thing that I've heard from our neighbors is that they just wake up in the morning and they see people busy going, going going and it's like they may walk fast, but they don't have anywhere to go. They wake up in the morning and they feel like what the heck am I doing with my day?

Talia: Can you break it down? How exactly the operation at Knock Knock give a Sock works.

Adina: Sure. So prior to COVID we basically had three different pillars of our organization. One, we distribute half a million socks a year. The second pillar are these meet your neighbor events that we put on primarily through companies but sometimes with local church or synagogue communities, where we bring people who have collected socks and people who have received those socks, to have dinner side-by-side. And the third pillar is we do one huge holiday carnival every year for over 300 kids living in shelters. And a lot of people don't recognize that kids are homeless. Kids are living in shelters. There are over 25,000 Kids in New York City alone who are living in shelters every single night.

Talia: Is that why you decided to create your picture books for children?

Adina: So the the picture books for children are a little bit different. So once the pandemic hit in March 2020, all of a sudden, no companies were in their offices, which meant we didn't have sock drives happening. So for a good six months, I just had to let go my employees and COVID was really hard. And then come September of 2020, the wheel started spinning and I actually think I spoke to you about children's books. But I realized that I needed to figure out a way to humanize homelessness for everybody. And at that time, there was actually a lot of articles being written, you know, primarily on the Upper West Side of New York City of a lot of folks who were living in shelters…

Talia: That was when all those hotels were, you know, being repurposed as shelters.

Adina: Exactly. So once all those hotels were being transitioned into shelters, a lot of neighbors were getting really upset and frustrated. I wanted to figure out a way where people could understand homelessness and talk to their kids about and talk to their families about it, and create real empathy. And that's when I decided that I wanted to write a children's book about homelessness.

Talia: Can you read us an excerpt from the book? Do you have it with you?

Adina: I have it right here. Let me find a good page for it.

Every friend we meet gets a new pair of socks. First, there's Jeff, he shows me the books he sells on the street. When he has extra money, he gives it to his friends to help them. Next, I meet Lisa, Lisa can't work because her mom is sick, and she needs to take care of her. But don't tell my mom, I live on the street, Lisa says, I don't need her worrying about me. I even met a teenager named James, who looks just like my babysitter, he says that he didn't grow up with a mom or dad, and now that he's becoming a grown up, he doesn't know where to go.

So those are a few of the examples of people characters that we meet in the story. And they're all based on real people who've told me their stories, why they're in the shelter, or why they're on the street, and why they don't have a home of their own.

Talia: So what would a donation to Knock Knock give a Sock do for the organization?

Adina: It used to be that our sponsored events would really just impact all the work that we're doing that we never really needed individual donors. For the first time now we actually need them because for our Meet Your Neighbor events that we're organizing, we're inviting the general public. So we're charging $35 for a ticket, but that $35 is supposed to cover two people's meals, and most of the catering companies that we work with are at least $30 per head. So right now, for the foreseeable future, we're going to be operating at a loss on all of our events. So now donations really make the biggest impact in terms of putting on these Meet Your Neighbor events.

The biggest thing people ask me all the time, is what can I do? What can I give? How can I help? And what I always try to encourage is connect with your neighbors on the street. People always ask, should I give money? Should I give food? I don't know if I want to give money, all these different questions. I always say the biggest thing you could give is humanity — and I encourage you to learn the names of your neighbors on the street and remember them and say hello to them by their first name, it's the biggest thing you can do. And for a lot of people who are intimidated to actually connect with their neighbors on the street, if you see anyone with a cardboard zine that has a story that saying, hey, XYZ happened to me, these are the people who are actually looking for the deepest human connection. They're telling you their story, they're sharing. So avoiding eye contact is the last thing we should be doing and actually approach those neighbors and see how we can help.