OUTSIDEIN:INSIDEOUT EP.001
Hello 👋👋 Dani and Miranda here, we are excited to share with you our interview with Ross Moffett from our street team! This interview gives an inside look on all things social impact, our street team and the people who help make it all happen.
Enjoy!
DANI: Introduce yourself, tell us where you're from & just give us a little background about you.
ROSS: My name is Ross Moffett, and throughout my time with OutsideIn I feel I have worn several different hats from the very beginning. I ran a music promotion company in Belfast doing a showcase to raise funds for homelessness and we had it on national radio, on television, it was well promoted. Then a mutual friend said you and David should hook up. David and I got on really well and from that I have been to Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Los Angeles, Belfast everywhere it feels like with David trying to promote the message of OutsideIn.
I have a 9-5-day job, as time went on I got promoted, so the time I could give to OutsideIn streetwear started to fade a little bit. We had to re-evaluate where my skill set lay and where I could bring most to the table. It was clear the streetwear fashion wasn't my thing, but I was passionate about the message and how as a collective unit we can help rewrite homelessness. I offered my services to David to head up the street team. For those who don't know the Street Team, when a consumer buys a product from OutsideIn there's a second product that is given and they can choose to do give it out themselves or ask that we do it. We partner with a number of registered charities and what we do is go to distribute products to those on the street.
MIRANDA: What is the why behind your passion for social impact and why this field?
ROSS: That sort of evolved for me, it was only showing by doing first. David showed me the way to engage with the guys on the street. Most of society will walk past these guys and girls on the street, it was when David shared his reason 'why' and told the story of how OutsideIn had started. A man on the busiest street in Edinburgh told David, “you are the first person to speak to me all day”. That really resonated with me, even in transitioning to the street team I started to try it. I stopped and listened to their stories, and I fell for characters and helped where I could. As this has evolved more and more it's not something I think I should do, but it's something I know I'm built to do. I am meant to do this, and I am supposed to help them.
DANI: Can you explain to us what you’ve done with OutsideIn with the street team?
ROSS: It started off as OutsideIn growing, all hands were on deck making merch, empowering people to help, and we cannot empower others if we are not willing to do it ourselves. We can only help by building trust and we can't build trust by being out once every six months. We have to be there a couple of times a week, so if they ever needed me, they knew I was going to be there on a Monday or a Thursday. They knew I was going to be there at such & such time, on such & such date. If they did not have access to telephone, or couldn’t connect via email they knew I was going to pass them by. Through this we can tell the story of what actually happens on the street, real life accounts not third-hand tales.
Hopefully that would resonate and that's how the chain of events should work. We've prevented suicides, helped people fill out visa applications, we have got people in jobs, rehabilitation centres, we helped people back to faith, we got people clean clothes, and we reconnected people with their families. More importantly than any of that is we have instilled hope back into these people, we instilled the notion they are worth something more than the way people look down on them on the streets.
DANI: What do you think the future of the street team looks like?
ROSS: It has to develop, we got so many skilled people on this team. From teachers, salesmen, graphic designers, students, and everyone in between. The common theme is passion for this work, we have a goal and we have a strap line “rewriting homelessness” and people often ask us what that is: (Re-education, Re-homing, and Re-skilling). We are going to create a blueprint and once we get that blueprint right, then we'll roll that out city by city and hopefully around the world. This is a man-made problem and it'll involve a man-made solution. We are only able to do that by partnering with charities, with the help from our consumers and their massive support, the bigger we are the more we can help. We thank our customers and for anyone who supports this they should know it's a real thing.
Rewriting homelessness in 2021 will be massive! The ethos stays the same and we're going to adapt and continue to help!
There's no better team on the planet!
Final Point:
We hope you left inspired as we did!
Want to hear more? You can access the full interview on our IGTV instagram (weare_oi) or on Youtube. A big shout out to Ross for taking us behind the scenes, and a big thanks to YOU for being part of our social impact journey.
-Dani & Miranda