A good two weeks fades. A changed life doesn't.
If someone goes home to the same debt, the same empty apartment and the same people, the stay was a holiday. So every stay comes with a named person for 90 days and a written plan with money behind it, aimed at the problem itself.
- Written with you, in your words, by people qualified to help
- One named person who stays in touch for 90 days
- Each step names who is responsible: a partner, a specialist, you
- Money set aside for the practical costs: a deposit, a course, a ticket
- Measured honestly: did the housing, the job, the treatment actually happen
Real help, matched to the reason you came.
Partners deliver most of this: housing charities, debt counselors, employers, clinicians, mentors. ESCAPE's job is to arrange it, pay for what needs paying, and make sure it happens.
Heartbreak and betrayal
Distance from the person and the places. Support to grieve a relationship properly. New people around you. When you are ready, and only then, help finding love again, including a relationship coach if you want one.
Losing someone
Grief counseling with a professional. A small group of people who have lost someone too. Help with the practical weight that follows a death: the paperwork, the house, the money. A reason to get up, found slowly.
Money
A nonprofit debt counselor. Help claiming every benefit you are owed. Emergency assistance for the gap. A realistic budget. Work, through partners and sponsor employers. And an honest look at whether the same money would go further somewhere else.
A home you cannot stay in
Housing referrals and transitional accommodation. Help to leave safely, including domestic-violence services where needed. Moving help. A deposit, when that is the only thing in the way.
Bullying and being shut out
A community that wants you there. Friends made at the dinner table, kept afterwards. Support for who you are. Help setting safe boundaries online, including walking away from the accounts that hurt.
Hating your body or yourself
Kindness first. Then real tools: a nutritionist, a workout partner, a doctor's check, sleep, and people who like you as you are. Progress you can feel, not a before-and-after photo.
Addiction
Clinical treatment through licensed partners, because ESCAPE is not a rehab. A sober community. The natural highs that make a clean life worth having: movement, nature, purpose, people.
Stuck in a life that isn't working
Retraining and new qualifications. Mentors. Job placements with employers who sponsor the program. A plan to move cities or careers, with the first steps paid for.
Individual plans, not guaranteed outcomes. Clinical needs are met by clinicians; ESCAPE arranges and pays, it does not treat.
Sometimes the answer is a different place.
Someone drowning in rent in an expensive city may have enough to live comfortably for years in a cheaper one, or a cheaper country. Someone who cannot walk down their own street can walk down a different one. Leaving is a legitimate plan, and it can be done properly. In the first pilot this means help moving within the US; moves abroad are a later stage.
- Legally. Real visas for real stays: work visas, study visas, long-stay and digital-nomad visas where they exist. Never border runs or tricks that leave someone stranded.
- With a plan. A job or income first, a place to live, a doctor, a community that is expecting you.
- With continuity. Your named person stays with you through the move and after it.
- Honestly. Moving does not fix everything. It removes some problems and it can make treatment easier to stick with. We say which is which.
Within the country
A smaller city, a quieter region, closer to family or further from it. Often the biggest change for the least cost.
Abroad
For some people the right move. Arranged with immigration advice, medical continuity and a local partner, and only when it is safe for that person.
Back home, differently
Most people go home. The point is that home is different: a job, a housing plan, a group, a person who calls.
Concept renderEmployers can be the most practical donors of all.
A company that gives money is generous. A company that also interviews our guests, trains them, or guarantees a first job is changing the ending.
Corporate sponsors can fund places on a stay, cover travel, donate equipment or services, and open their hiring to people coming through ESCAPE. Job coaching, interview practice and the first month's costs are part of the plan when work is the problem.
Talk to us about sponsoring workThe community does not end when the stay does.
The first 90 days
Scheduled check-ins with your named person. The plan worked through step by step. Problems caught early.
The people you met
Guests from your stay stay in touch, in moderated groups, with the same boundaries that kept everyone safe on site.
Giving it back
Many people who come through ESCAPE will want to help someone else later. Trained and supervised, they can become Angels. Only when they are ready, and never as a condition of anything.
Measured honestly.
- Did the housing, the job, the treatment, the move actually happen, and by when
- How people say they are doing at 30, 60 and 90 days, in their own words and on simple scales
- Whether they are still connected to someone
- What went wrong, written down and reviewed by an independent researcher
- Who we had to turn away, and why, so scarce places are given out fairly
We will never claim a number of lives saved. We will publish what we measured, including the limits.