The Journey to TPCP
Photo by Mary Gorry Photography
Origins
When I was a junior in high school, I told my history teacher that I wanted to open a school for troubled teens and name it after the grandparents who raised me. Over the next two decades, I thought periodically about my dream to start a nonprofit organization. But I could never settle on a cause---and the thought of running a nonprofit was intimidating. That changed in fall 2023, when Rhiannon Scharnhorst and I began working on what would become “The Purple Collar Project: A Manifesto For Quiet Rebellion Against Class Erasure,” published in Peitho in fall 2024. We completed our draft on a Friday evening in March, and I spent the whole weekend thinking, “What if the The Purple Collar Project is more than a publication”? I just couldn’t shake the notion that, after more than 20 years, I had finally stumbled upon the answer to my mission. And rather than feeling intimidated, I thought, “I’m exactly the person who should be running a nonprofit organization.”
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The Purple Collar Project (TPCP) isn’t named directly after my grandparents, but it is rooted in the values they instilled me: resilience, hard work, kindness, generosity, advocacy, and confidence. The TPCP is a continuous work-in-progress, so we hope you join us along our journey and yours.
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In Solidarity,
Founder and President, Jess Corey
A young Jess Corey with her grandmother, grandfather, and brother, in Webster Springs, West Virginia, where they spent one of their annual family “vacations” visiting her great grandmother. Their other annual family vacation was spent at Merriewold Club in Sullivan, New York, visiting her grandfather’s brother and niece.