Now here’s a fashion trend to get behind: The 15 Below jacket is a low-cost solution to help the homeless survive the winter. The jacket has multiple pockets throughout the lining where newsprint, one of the most effective insulators, can be scrunched and stuffed into. When not being worn, the jacket can be folded into a backpack or used as a pillow. The Salvation Army will distribute 3000 of these coats (donated by Taxi) in four major cities across Canada.
There are an estimated 300,000 homeless people in Canada, and more than 80 people die each year from over-exposure to the cold.
On a personal note…my hometown had an “out of the cold warming room”, a big room in a church basement that was opened to the homeless on nights of extreme cold (-15°C or colder), to get them into a warm space so they wouldn’t freeze to death. In my last year of high school, I had expressed my desire to volunteer there and my mother, a social worker, had forbid it. She feared for my safety on the overnight shifts. But she was out of town on the night that I got called in…and she had left her car. 
At the shelter, I met the social service worker in the cold church basement, watched a short instructional video meant to sensitize me to homeless people and mental illness, and then sat down at a table to wait for the crowds. When people came in, we offered them a warm drink, some oatmeal, and blankets to sleep under on the hard floor. We passed the time shelling and eating pistachios. It was largely uneventful, and only a handful of people came to the shelter.
One of them though, I will never forget. A man came to the shelter, skinny and shivering, smelling strongly of liquor. He didn’t stay long, just long enough to warm up with a cup of coffee. As he stood in front of me and lifted his arm to drink, I saw that he had a colostomy bag. It was frozen.
