But as she looked at the world around her — she realized she was living in a bubble. She started talking to those she passed on the streets every day, and she began to see a different reality. One that was dark and lonely, but filled with some of the most beautiful and compassionate people.

“I know someone who lives in Toronto Community Housing. He’ll let anyone sleep there, and even gives up his bedroom to sleep in the kitchen. People will hurt him, steal from him and he’ll still let them come back and sleep there.” — CG

She knew tech was where she wanted to be, but she wanted to use it to help people. That’s when CG started Ample Labs, a nonprofit dedicated to using tech to empower the homeless. Little did she know someone very close to her would fall into homelessness.

“My parents always had a bad marriage. I saw lots of domestic violence growing up, and a few months ago my dad kicked her out of the house. I didn’t want her to live in a shelter because I would visit them all the time I know what it’s like in there.” — CG

Ever since CG’s mom had surgery a few years ago, it was difficult to find work. She wasn’t bringing a lot of money home and things were getting worse at home. A few months ago, CG’s dad told her mom to leave because she wasn’t making an income. Even though CG begged her to stay with her, she didn’t want to be a burden. For her, it was a calling of faith to go to a shelter, to help people in an even worse place than she was.

“It’s different when it happens so close to you. Everything we were doing up until that point suddenly became even more real to me. I felt so many mixed emotions. When you think about if it was your family, how would you look at things? How would you treat that person you see on the street if she was your mom?” — CG

CG’s mom lived in shelters for a month and a half. During that time, she would actually panhandle. With all the coins she got at the end of the day, she’d buy bread at the dollar store and just give it away.

“Where do you see that level of compassion and selflessness? I see a lot of it from people I’ve met within shelters and the streets.” — CG

Now, her mom moved back in with her dad, but there’s still a lot of tension at home. She leaves for most of the day to go to drop-ins. CG’s dad doesn’t let her eat the groceries at home so CG goes with her to the food bank to get food. She’s still at shelters a lot because she wants to help and even shares about the community CG is building through Ample Labs.

“I don’t know if I’d be doing Ample if I had an easy time growing up. It teaches you what suffering looks like and when it’s happening to people close to you, you just want to help.” — CG

Sometimes helping people can be hard. CG’s mom would tell her how she couldn’t sleep at a local women’s shelter. A lot of people there have severe mental health issues and they’ll scream and cry throughout the night. All her things got stolen there. It was heartbreaking for CG to see her go through all that and still choose to stay. Her mom had friends who were there to help her, but she thought that was the path chosen for her by God.

“It’s a room full of people who are struggling. People are hurting, they’re emotional, they’re angry so fights break out a lot. I feel bad for the staff who work there day in and day out. I can’t imagine how emotionally straining that must be and I deeply respect people working in the front-lines.” — CG

At the beginning of Ample Labs, CG was attending drop-ins at shelters weekly with members from her team and just having conversations with people. One man who stands out by Tim Hortons at Yonge and Dundas holds the door open for everyone. At the end of every single day, he takes all the money he collects and gives to his friends.

“You meet the most beautiful and honest people. You see how people who don’t have a lot want to help others. If you compare that to people who have a lot, you can see there’s this selfishness.” — CG

So far, CG and the team have done hundreds of one-on-one interviews, learning how people end up living inside local Toronto shelters, what their goals and aspirations are. Once they saw a common thread, they would create personas of the kinds of people that they could use technology to help.

“At the heart of Ample is co-creation. We take this approach because a lot of services out there are hard to access, and designed without the people actually using it in mind. We always think from the ground up, and we’re very hands-on about working with the community.” — CG

They hosted 8 co-design workshops to date where they’d use design thinking to come up with solutions together. That’s how Chalmers was born. It’s a user-friendly, chat-based resource that makes it easy for people to find what they need based on their location. Every part of the building of it was made and improved upon with community input.

“We’d prototype, come back again and present what we built. People would see their input being implemented and actually try it out to see how it felt. Front-line staff and people living in the shelters helped us create this and they have been sharing it with people who they know will find it helpful.” — CG

When people try Chalmers, they get really excited and have a lot of ideas on what could be done. For example, at Sherbourne health, they serve LGBTQ+ and non-binary youth, and there’s not a lot of services for them. They want to make sure places they recommend are safe so that’s where Chalmers can help. They’ve done demos at youth shelters, local refugee service providers and every time are getting more feedback about new features and excitement from both youth and staff. It’s by word of mouth that they have gotten over 300 monthly users in four months of testing.

“We’ve seen people type in all sorts of things. They message Chalmers and express they’re feeling depressed or suicidal. The next services we want to prioritize are mental health, evictions/legal-aid, and employment services.” — CG

To date, they’ve helped +9500 Torontonians find free meals, shelter and clothing but the demand for more resources like mental health and lgbtq+ youth friendly services is huge! To bridge this gap and support the team to improve Chalmers faster they have launched a crowdfunding campaign! Every dollar helps.

In the short-term, CG sees Ample Labs building more products that address needs in the community. She’s been chatting with folks from HelpSeeker and ShelterTech that are working on similar technologies. Her vision is a social lab where small and big tech players can work with us to come up with different technological solutions and apply it to different steps in the journey for someone who may be at-risk of homelessness so we are taking more preventative measures rather than being reactive.

Her vision for Ample Labs has always been to build a world where no one has to face homelessness. The tech sector is growing rapidly and more and more people are becoming passionate about building technologies that have a huge social impact.

“One time I had a friend call me at night wanting to help someone who was drunk and needed to find shelter. So I pulled up Chalmers without thinking, found central intake’s number and texted it to her to let her know that’s where she can call to reserve a bed. If this is a use case for me, this has to be a use case for others.” — CG

This is CG’s message to those experiencing homelessness:

“If you don’t have people in your life that know, or would understand, we are here for you. I may not have personally gone through it but I can imagine how difficult it must be. Please reach out to us.” — CG

Find out how you can get involved at amplelabs.co.

If you or someone you know has a story that can destigmatize homelessness, sharing it is part of the solution. Email us at stories@amplelabs.co or find us on Twitter and Instagram.

From taking a leap of faith to lessons learned, read more about CG here. In her downtime, CG likes to take photos, color coordinate with cars and dance to shake the stress away. Check out her shots!