Life-coaching on skid row starts with scrapping the textbook

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-0405-banks-homeless-fitness-20140405,0,1886737.column



Residents of the Los Angeles Mission work out during a session with volunteer trainers as part of a nonprofit project called Urban Fitness 911.

Life-coaching on skid row starts with scrapping the textbook
By Sandy Banks
April 4, 2014, 4:58 p.m.

Wendy Newton's first impulse was to just say no: She wasn't going to volunteer her life-coaching services to women on skid row.

She has two young children and a "person-centered branding" business with demanding clients. She didn't want to waste hours in rush hour traffic, crawling from Beverly Hills to downtown Los Angeles every week.

But then she remembered how good it felt when she worked with inner-city teens years before. So she agreed to try skid row.

~snip~

The coaches scrapped the textbook approach and relied on the women to guide them. "We asked and we listened and we learned what they needed," said Marigrace Gleason, a therapist whose specialty is women's empowerment circles.