Hialeah Gardens senior leads Miami launch of homeless relief nonprofit from Australia

An Australian nonprofit dedicated to providing free sleeping bags to people in need officially launched its Miami chapter this month with an event in partnership with Liberty City’s Curleys House Hope Relief Food Bank.

For Jose Perez, a senior at Hialeah Gardens Senior High School and director of the Sleepwarm Foundation’s Miami chapter, the effort began with an Instagram conversation with the nonprofit’s CEO, Julian Tran.

“After we saw that we were both the right match for this program, we decided to open up a chapter in Miami,” said Perez.

Tran started the Sleepwarm Foundation in Australia in 2024. He said that the comfort of his own bed was something he never thought twice about until a high-school camping trip.

“I brought with me a North Face sleeping bag,” said Tran. “It was pretty expensive, but it was only rated to about 30 degrees Fahrenheit. And at nighttime I was just thinking all the way back to my parents and my upbringing in San Jose, in California, which has such a high population of homeless people.”

Now the organization distributes bags that work even in freezing weather.

“No one should ever feel forgotten in the cold,” Tran said. “And I really want to inspire that same sense of fulfillment and duty and growth to other young people across the world. I think that’s really important to me.”

The story was originally published by Caplin News, a publication of FIU's Lee Caplin School of Journalism & Media, as part of an editorial content partnership with the WLRN newsroom.