Sleep in Heavenly Peace

As part of my path here at LHS, I am required to complete ten hours of volunteer work. After some searching and some updates from my father, who helped me with the volunteer work itself, I stumbled upon Sleep in Heavenly Peace. 

Sleep in Heavenly Peace is an organization which takes a straightforward approach to solving a problem plaguing the nearby area. The problem? Many children in our town and other areas across our country do not have a bed.  Sleep in Heavenly Peace (S.H.P) addresses the problem by building beds from scratch – an approach which I admire. 

S.H.P was founded in a garage in Idaho, after a project dedicated to building a bunk bed for a single family resulted in some leftover wood. The founders made a Facebook post asking if anyone needed the bunk, but the response was not just requests from families in need. In fact, when someone does a good deed, people who want to help out ask if they can help. These volunteers turned the question from "who needs this bed?" to "how many beds can we provide?" This snowballed into 270 chapters (places where SHP operates) being made across the entirety of the United States. The NY-Syracuse chapter is the chapter where I helped out at.

Tasks for volunteers include putting together bed frames, which can range from cutting the bed slats and side rails from unfinished pine to assembling the bed frames themselves, to even using a stain to treat the bed frames. SHP uses a special compound from vinegar and steel wool to make said stain, which not only colors the beds but also repels bed bugs (this, I found out, was purely coincidental.) My task was to organize the cut bed slats and side rails. Since I am 17, I was not allowed to use a saw (for obvious reasons) but could still help out at that station. 

Due to the repetitive nature of my task, I had some time to think about what I was doing. I was giving these children in need a better future and life, since not many other organizations provide beds to people in need. A good night's sleep is integral to a good foundation, from work ethic to just not being visibly tired in the first place. I began to realize that the number of lives I was impacting just by helping out there was much larger than I anticipated. It was oddly gratifying, knowing that being covered in sawdust and the smell of vinegar meant that I was improving the lives of so many people at once. At the end of my 3-hour shift, the entire volunteer force, myself included, had made 47 beds. That is about 15 beds per hour, which is a lot more than I had anticipated. 

Halfway through the build, we took a break and Dave Hoalcraft, the build manager (i.e., he oversees the building itself) explained how we impact the lives of the children the organization delivers beds to. Their faces would apparently light up with happiness as soon as the delivery people showed up at their house. Due to the build itself taking place this month, he mentioned how, every time a bed was delivered, that child would look back and remember that that was the best Christmas present they ever got. Mr. Hoalcraft seemed to be really passionate about how his work impacted the lives of these children.

One of the co-presidents of the chapter, Jeff Pitt, gave me and my father the run-down on how the chapter works. Families in need can place requests for beds, and their address and children's demographic (age and gender) are placed on an order sticker. The families can even request certain types of beddings, and S.H.P will attempt to fulfill the request. The beds and beddings are then taken to the house, where the volunteers will assemble the bed at the family's home. They even allow the children to assist with the work. The process seemed to reflect a general air of kindness within the organization, and Mr. Pitt even joked about a ridiculous-sounding label "Please hand this to the responsible one. This mattress knows kung-fu…" on a mattress he found. The whole experience was just incredibly wholesome, and I could see Mr. Pitt's passion behind this chapter. 

I wholeheartedly recommend helping out at S.H.P if you want to help out the community in any way, shape, or form. During the build, you are instructed quite clearly on how to do what you have to do, and sometimes, it is just fun to be covered in sawdust and the smell of vinegar. You are also helping to make the world a better place, one bed at a time. Nationally, S.H.P is ensuring that "No Kid Sleeps on the Floor in Our Town!"