Nest Community Shelter began more than two decades ago as a traveling PADS program, meaning that we moved from church to church across Michigan City. This allowed us to build our program, and for the churches that supported it, it allowed them to live God’s mission to care for those in need. As a program, we were incredibly blessed to have so many dedicated faith partners to host our guests at night. From this firm support, Nest Community Shelter was able to grow to meet the needs of our community, eventually opening a permanent shelter in Michigan City. As we’ve grown and the needs of our community have expanded, we’ve never forgotten the love and support we received in those early years from our faith partners.
Late last year, Nest Community Shelter was bestowed a historic gift from St. Paul’s parish in Michigan City. This generous gift was given to Nest Community Shelter after the sale of the parish school. When asked why the parish of St. Paul’s decided to bless Nest Community Shelter with this gift, St. Paul’s Pastor Mark Reshan said, When we sold the school, we determined we’d give half away, particularly to those we’d been involved with in the past. We hosted a men and women’s shelter for years. Harry started here. This is where he received the bulk of his training.”
These funds are one of the largest single gifts ever bestowed upon Nest Community Shelter. The funds will be invested in order to ensure that the gift will continue to support Nest Community Shelter’s mission and St. Paul’s parish’s wish that these funds will make a long-lasting gift for those who need it most in our community. “What we want to do is ensure that this gift can be a lasting legacy for the parish of St. Paul’s. We are creating opportunities for these funds to grow so that this gift may live on and empower the lives of our guests for years to come,” said Nest Community Shelter Director Harrison Holtkamp. He continued on to say, “Funding our operations can be complex. Most people don’t realize that the work we do is exceptionally labor intensive in order to ensure a safe site for our guests and the community. In most cases, grants cannot be used to fund staffing. The investment of the gift from St. Paul’s will, in part, ensure that we can shore up adequate staffing costs when other solutions might not be present.”
Nest Community Shelter plans to publicly thank the parish of St. Paul’s for their generous gift by sharing the impact of these funds at a Sunday morning service in the next few months. St. Paul’s parish Treasurer, Karen Fleming, said, “We felt that the shelter has been a part of our mission. At the beginning, we were part of it. We have some ownership there. The shelter operations moved out, but we’re still connected to it. Nest Community Shelter is vitally important to us.” Fleming went on to say, “We want to help Nest Community Shelter be a great success and reduce homelessness and the issues surrounding it.
On behalf of all those at Nest Community Shelter, we want to extend our most heartfelt gratitude to the entire congregation at St. Paul’s parish for this life-changing gift. These funds will have a long-lasting, multi-generational impact on those that we serve, our entire community, and beyond. Furthermore, these gifts will not only allow us to continue to live our mission but, by extension, it will allow us to live the mission that St. Paul’s helped us begin, to serve those in our community in need with dignity, determination, and love.
