We’re continuing our spotlight on volunteers with a look at a special group of volunteers who have been serving at New Visions for more than 5 years now, and who, over the last 24 years, have built a network of service to individuals facing homelessness that serves hundreds of people every year. Back in 2000, Dave Harvey’s son was doing confirmation hours and Dave wanted to help his son find some meaningful service in the community. They visited a local shelter to serve food, and this stirred a passion within Dave to do even more. Dave looked for more opportunities to help and soon began his own food distributions for individuals living on the streets.
Working with individuals facing homelessness, Dave soon began to better understand what people needed in order to achieve more stability in their lives. In addition to feeding people, he added bikes, tents, and cans to his distributions, as he saw these as additional pathways to help people secure jobs and housing. “It takes time,” he says, “but people will often share with me how getting a bike or a tent was the first step towards getting clean or getting housed.” Once Dave began to see more people getting housed, he added furniture to his growing list of ways to help, and now he and his team help to furnish 8-10 apartments every week for people who are transitioning out of homelessness.
Doing this for 24 years, Dave stays motivated to continue serving because of the hope and humanity that he sees when people know that someone cares about them. He remembers a night in December about 10 years ago. There was heavy snow and wind and Dave couldn’t stop thinking about some of the folks he knew who were staying outside. “I ventured out to one of the places where I knew people were staying in tents and I was just hoping they were still alive,” he says. “I checked in on them and thankfully they were okay. As I walked away, I saw one of the guys standing outside his tent watching me leave. I figured he might need something, so I called back to him through the blizzard. He said he was just
keeping an eye on me while I left to make sure no one messed with me. It still gets me today. Here he is living out in a tent in a blizzard, but he cares enough about me to stand outside and make sure I get home unharmed.”
Dave’s care for others has grown into a ministry called Least of My Brethren that utilizes over 100 volunteers a month to feed and clothe people and furnish apartments. His group serves our campus at New Visions every 4th Sunday and he says ours continues to be one of the biggest events in the Omaha metro. In spite of the growth, Dave keeps things personal with the people he serves. “I never want this to become a business,” he says, “we look people in the eye, we use names, we do our best to take down any barriers that might be perceived.” We’re grateful to be a part of what Dave and his team are doing, and for his partnership in bringing help, hope, and opportunity to our neighbors experiencing hunger and homelessness.
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