See Beautiful Grant Applicant: Love Beyond Walls

The feature below is brought to you by Love Beyond Walls, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about our giving initiatives, please click here.
 
To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.

No one is invisible

Love Beyond Walls is committed to serving people currently experiencing homelessness with dignity, to lead them on the path to self-sufficiency in ways that are unique to each person. 
 
We are committed to creating a world where no one is invisible. We fight for equity, narrative justice, and inclusion of our neighbors without an address daily. In fact, we believe that just because a person does not have an address does not mean that they are not our neighbor.
 
Whether through providing visibility, shelter, grooming, community, or support services - beauty is at the heart of how we practice presence and proximity with our community.
 
Below are a couple of projects that embody creating equal access for our neighbors experiencing homelessness:
 
The Clean Break Project:
A few weeks ago, one of my friends experiencing homelessness told me he used buckets to collect rainwater to take showers or to clean himself. 
 
He told me he would literally have to sit the bucket in the sun all day to get it warm enough to clean up. He said it was great that organizations bring out showers, but they are never around throughout the week.  And so, we had an idea to take old 250-gallon tanks and turn them into self-contained showers for people experiencing homelessness to have access to sanitation around the clock, when they need to, not dependent on when someone else decides to help.  Why? Because as Dr. King says, "The time is always right to do what is right."  We had the opportunity to address the issue of the lack of sanitation through handwashing through our 'Love Sinks In' campaign nationwide, and now we wanted to give people access to showers when they needed them instead of having to wait on an organization's shower truck to pull up.
 
John, one of our community members experiencing homelessness, was the first person to use our showers. He told us he sometimes goes days without being able to get a shower.
It's incredible how much impact something as simple as a hot shower can make. When John got out of the shower, John told us he felt clean and ready to get off the streets. And so, our new campaign name was born: 
 
The Clean Break Project. Providing one more stepping stone for our community members on the road to new beginnings and opportunities.  We are so excited to build more of these self-contained showers around the city and country! Also we are working on a series of videos to build empathy.

'Find Your Why' Docu-series:
Our latest endeavor is our empathy-building docuseries, "Find Your Why."
As this pandemic has extended, the community and our nation need more than sanitation and physical health; communities are in great need of humanity and empathy for others to make it through these times together. Because of this need, we are now dedicated to developing virtual empathy training for adults and students!
 
As you may know, on May 18th, we are partnering to launch a new book entitled, When We Stand with Intervarsity Press. One of our main goals by releasing this book is to help people worldwide understand what they are capable of when they use their gifts to collaborate with others. 
 
Most of us have been isolated from so many people because of the pandemic, and this leaves us feeling hopeless, but when we mobilize and act together, we empower each other to do what we can't do on our own—and solve justice issues. The main narrative centers around the main idea: 
 
A person needs community to discover and sustain their work. We want people to take a small step toward finding their why/personal discovery. We want people to go deeper into their existing relationships, build new perspectives and tear down false narratives.
 
Our community members who experience homelessness spend each day and night feeling no sense of inclusion in the world around them. Cars drive past them, and people walk by them. Everyday citizens avert their gaze and maybe even cross the street to avoid them. They are made to feel less than human. Love Beyond Walls aims to see this part of our community for who they are and who they will become.
Developing empathy is crucial to ensuring that people experiencing homelessness are seen and supported, and respected—our training allows people the opportunity to understand and share the feelings of people experiencing homelessness.
 
This project focuses on helping to humanize people who are marginalized and made invisible through laws, ordinances, and biases that stereotype their entire existence.
 
It will teach the target audience to be more inclusive and more equitable in their engagement and involvement with their neighbors without an address.
 
It will also teach that just because someone doesn't have a physical address does not mean that they are not neighbors. And so, this project is about embracing the whole community. We get a chance to talk about that in-depth through this training program.
 
A part of equity is deeply connected to having our existence affirmed and not hurt people's access to resources. 
 
More vitally, it is about being seen as worthy of having access to resources. The reason people don't have equity is because their very existence has not been seen as something beautiful and worthy of being included. This is what we are fighting for at Love Beyond Walls.
 
Our resources will provide vital social justice empathy training for police precincts in Georgia, public school systems, homeless shelters, college students, and for any organization with a drive to learn more. We are seeking to bring people together to create a world of empathy.
 
A world full of equity, inclusivity, and justice is a beautiful world. Love Beyond Walls strives to make the world a more beautiful place for ALL to live in together.

Submitted by Terence Lester

Executive Director, Love Beyond Walls