Homeless Advocate Miss Florida Competes for the Crown

by Josie Raymond · 2010-01-29 09:23:00 UTC
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Grab your body glitter and evening gown and get ready to watch the Miss America pageant on Saturday night (8 p.m. EST on TLC). Why on earth would you do that, you ask? Why, to root with all your might for Miss Florida, Rachael Todd. Like all Miss America contestants, Todd has chosen a platform on which to work if she wins the crown and travels the world for a year smiling broadly and doing nice things for people. Her cause is ending homelessness and, thanks to her involvement with the organization her mother founded to help the homeless community, she's well-versed on the issue.

Perhaps unlike some of the other contestants, Todd didn't just pick her cause out of a hat. While she was a student at the University of Central Florida a few years ago, her mom surprised everyone by quitting a job in business and founding the HOPE Foundation, which aims to alleviate homelessness in Florida through housing, outreach, prevention and education. Todd, 22, has participated at HOPE for years and has been touring Florida's shelter system and participating with the National Alliance to End Homelessness since she won the Sunshine State's crown six months ago.

She knows that the issue of homelessness isn't quite as traditional, or universally accepted, as other women's platforms will be (recent winners have promoted community service, eating disorder awareness and protecting children on the internet). "I see this opportunity mostly as a microphone," she told the Orlando Sentinel. "I'm not just advocating for something like children with cancer, which no one could argue against. Homelessness stirs controversy and it gets people talking. And if people are talking, that gives me an opening." Todd thinks she's just the one to deliver a message about the issue to people in their living rooms, even though a beautiful sequin-clad young woman clashes with the image many people have in their minds when they think of the homeless (you know, bedraggled vet panhandling on the side of the road).

"In this country, we have a mindset that, if you're not making it and if you're not able to afford the luxuries in life, then you're just not working hard enough. And that's wrong," Todd says. She's right, of course, but can she sell it to Rush Limbaugh, who will be one of the pageant's judges? Now that'll be a catfight.

Photo credit: Miss Florida Organization

Josie Raymond is a Change.org editor who has reported from the streets of the South Bronx, written for several magazines that folded (not her fault) and fixed thousands of typos.
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