Gala Honorees

2023 Eddy McIntyre Community Service Award

Constance Collins

Constance Collins, JD, is the Founder and President of the Sundari Foundation, Inc., a non-denominational 501c3 public charity, best known as the Lotus House Women’s Shelter, and its supporting foundations, Lotus Endowment Fund, Inc., Lotus Village Development, LLC, Lotus Village, II, LLC, and Lotus Supporting Foundation, Inc.  A lawyer and businessperson prior to founding Lotus House, Constance has been a full-time volunteer for the Lotus family of charitable organizations since 2004, establishing and overseeing the development, operations, programming, services, research and growth of the Lotus Village. In the all new, state of the art, comprehensive homeless services facility in Lotus Village and its planned expansion in the Children’s Village at Lotus Village, Lotus House is setting new standards on a national level with trauma informed, evidence based, best practices, and proven strategies to end and prevent homelessness that put children first and respond sensitively to the gender specific needs of sheltered guests.

Winner of the 2016 Non-Profit Innovation Award of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce and 2018 Project of the Year Award of the Urban Land Institute Southeast Florida/Caribbean among many other awards, Lotus Village is a prototype for the future and setting a new bar on the national level. Lotus Village was designed as a mixed-use “village” combining state of the art shelter facilities and holistic, trauma-informed, supportive services to heal, nurture and uplift children, youth and families experiencing homelessness. With capacity to shelter over 500 women, youth and children nightly, this trend-setter includes: solution focused individual needs assessments and social services supports, individual and group counseling, child and family therapy, and social services advocacy; a culinary training center sized to deliver a half million meals a year; a computer library for adult education, after school programming and job readiness training and employment assistance; an intake sanctuary and healing hands salon to soothe and uplift; yoga, Reiki, meditation, dance and exercise classes; an art and activities lab offering alternative pathways to healing and creative expression; welcoming play spaces for children throughout the village; and urban gardens nourishing bodies, minds and spirits. Aptly named, Lotus Village, because it takes a village, this new facility is the first of its kind on a national level, the more so because it includes a trauma-informed, therapeutic children’s wellness center including six classrooms offering early child care and education for newborns to age three, with a therapeutic overlay of child-parent therapy, play therapy, parenting classes, resource coordination, and linkages to key community partners to strengthen and uplift children and families.  So much more than a shelter, Lotus Village is a center for innovative, best practices, research and advocacy for public and social policies to raise awareness of the gender specific needs of women and youth experiencing homelessness and advance the health, wellbeing and school readiness of children experiencing homelessness, transforming trauma into a window of opportunity to strengthen children, youth and families, and offers a platform for deeper community engagement, collaboration, shared learning and dialogue, on a local, state and national level.

Lotus Village is currently expanding with the development of an innovative, new model neighborhood children’s resource center, the Children’s Village, to provide enriched educational facilities, therapeutic supports, diverse programming, greater access to health, legal and social services, and a wide range of community resources. The Children’s Village has already been recognized as an innovative new model for establishing neighborhood children’s resource centers with an Innovation Award from the Miami Dade County Children’s Trust and the Neighborhood Builder’s Excellence Award from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation. Creating a platform for unprecedented collaboration, the Children’s Village will demonstrate the power of a holistic collective impact model, where Lotus House and other Overtown based nonprofits and community organizations work together to heal, empower and uplift the Lotus House sheltered children and the children and families of their beloved Overtown neighborhood and surrounds. Breaking ground in June 2023 this state of the art, 75,000 sf, children’s facility is slated for occupancy in late 2024.

Mx. Collins also serves as the President and Executive Director of the National Women’s Shelter Network, a powerful and growing network of women’s shelters and shelter programs from across the country aimed at sharing evidence based best practices, building organizational capacity, developing innovative public policy, and advancing resources for women and children experiencing homelessness and the shelters that serve them to prevent and end homelessness.

Mx. Collins’ work on behalf of the Foundation was preceded by over twenty-two years of business, finance, real estate and legal experience. Constance served as the chief operating and financial officer, general counsel, and co-founder of a full service real estate investment advisory firm, Urban Investments Advisors, LLC (and its predecessor Starwood Urban Investments) and real estate holding company, Starwood Urban, LLC, and its subsidiaries, responsible for the acquisition, management and operation of a national commercial real estate investment portfolio, overseeing growth and value-added strategies, development, financing, accounting, and reporting for portfolio revenues, until the successful disposition of those investments in 2004. Prior to Starwood, Mx. Collins was in private law practice, representing institutional investors and lenders in structuring, negotiating and documenting complex real estate, business and financial transactions, credit recovery, litigation oversight, and repositioning of investment properties. Their business career laid the foundation for their work today in ending and preventing homelessness.