One woman’s answer to homelessness, gym memberships

A Sydney woman was so moved by the plight of one homeless man, she came up with the ultimate plan to help him off the streets … buy him a gym membership.
Personal trainer Chelcie Vera Cookson sparked online criticism after her live broadcast to Facebook over the weekend described how she was returning from volunteering feeding the homeless when she ran into Steve, 46, a homeless man whom she had spoken to on previous occasions.
After learning Steve had been on the streets for several years, Ms Cookson said she made the decision to try and help him.
“I said to him from now, ‘What do you want to do? Are you going to stay like this?’ … ‘If you could get back into work, if you could get a job, if you had the opportunity, would you?’” Ms Cookson recounted in the Facebook video.
It wasn’t until she was meditating later that she came up with the answer.
“During meditation it came to me, what could I do to make him … kind of effortlessly transform his life, and I realised ‘exercise’. Exercise is the key to so many things,” she said.
“So I thought, ‘I need to f***ing get him a gym membership. …The hook to get him there: shower facilities, so he’ll be able to user the showers, f***ing awesome.”
Ms Cookson said that when she approached Steve with her plan, he “said no five times”, but she was determined not to leave until he had agreed to her plan.
“I said, ‘You don’t have a choice… You don’t have a f***ing choice, you’re coming with me’.
While the idea attracted its share of love from her friends and followers on Facebook, there was also plenty of criticism.
After Ms Cookson posted her plan on Instagram, one user pointed out she could have concentrated on the more immediate concern of ensuring Steve had a bed, or shelter.
“What about somewhere to sleep, or is a gym membership more important?”, calvinbarker wrote.
Ms Cookson insisted she is providing Steve with “something he would never bother to do for himself”.
“I am making him invest his own time where he would usually be sitting on a sidewalk, in a gym,” she wrote in a reply to the comment.
“I am teaching him how he can get off his ass and improve his own life – this is how it’s done.”
Ms Cookson said her offer was trading “the cost of a f***ing pedicure a week to have someone’s life change”.