Movement 5280 receives financial support from Life.Church

BY HALEY LENA HLENA@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Movement 5280, a regional program that helps struggling youth with housing and assistance, recently received a large nancial boost from Life.Church to continue expansion plans.

Life.Church donated $50,000, which includes $20,000 to help with building renovations for their new location.

With three Colorado locations, including Centennial in the Denver metro area, Life.Church, serves its surrounding communities by funding and volunteering with organizations that support the well-being of others, families, education and justice.

“Our heart is to get connected in the community and see what organizations are really impacting our city and how we can support that,” said Life.Church South Denver Pastor Zack Harris. “ at’s really the heartbeat of our church, to know our neighbors and know those organizations.”

One of those organizations is Movement 5280.

Located in Englewood, and soon to be moving to a bigger location nearby, the nonpro t focuses on supporting at-risk young adults who have aged out of foster care or are experiencing homelessness.

In 2022, Movement 5280 served 805 individuals, 175 being youth, as reported in their 2022 Ministry Impact Report. rough donations, volunteers and fundraising - the organization provides meals, clothing, hygiene essentials, showers, mentoring, work program assistance and access to mental health care.

Movement 5280 envisions a world where young people who have been in state custody and foster care are not only employed but living in permanent and safe housing. To help young adults achieve these milestones, Movement 5280 has three primary focuses - survive, thrive and revive.

Tami Slipher is the director of development and community relations at Movement 5280.

“Our mission statement is to become a family of support to those that are navigating life on their own,” said Slipher. “We take a holistic approach to what we do with homelessness and that’s why we have these three focus groups.”

In addition to the day center, the organization provides hot meals, clothing and showers to help individuals survive. Among the many resources to help the individuals thrive, they provide life and job skill classes, GED and education assistance and expert services for mental health, addiction recovery and housing assistance.

Revive is the organization’s faithbased component. Lost and Found Church provides a space for individuals to have a community to come back to, celebrate milestones and worship.

Many young people who attended Movement 5280 continue to avolunteer, whether it’s in the Job Readiness Program or attend the Lost and Found Church.

One individual who was one of the rst clients at the organization was slowly drawn to the unconditional love and support that Movement 5280 provided. Now they continue to work with Movement 5280 with one of their nonpro t partners. is individual also engages with the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative and has experience with the Homeless Management Information System database which helps track people who might not have identication or phones. is system is used by Movement 5280.

With some non-pro t organizations closing their doors during the pandemic, Movement 5280 started supporting smaller nonpro ts that needed a brick and mortar space to provide services.

“Due to that abundance of collaboration that we continue to do, we just started connecting the dots with a lot of resource providers,” said Slipher.

For example, on Wednesdays, the organization provides an all ages resource day where people can have a hot meal, take showers and go through the clothing bank.

As the organization has continued to grow, it became clear that a bigger space is needed to give participating nonpro ts the space they need, which would also allow them to expand.

In regards to expanded resources, after the death of a man who was part of the bike shelter program, o cials of the program decided they needed to create transitional housing.

“We are doing it in his honor… Corey’s house,” said Slipher. “We spent a whole year working on what it would look like to have Movement 5280 do housing alongside all the wraparound services that we currently do.”

After having been in conversations with the owners of the once Englewood Bible Church, the Arapahoe County Commissioners awarded Movement 5280 with a $1.5 million

ARPA grant to purchase the church.

According to Slipher, the church sold a 34,000 square foot building that sits on two acres to Movement 5280 for $2.2 million and the organization mortgaged the balance.

In addition to the housing opportunity, with this larger space, the organization will be able to have a di erent room for an eye-doctor, therapists, dentists and other nonpro ts. Movement 5280 is currently in the renovation phase, which will need about $1 million to complete, Slipher said. Renovations include putting in showers, sprinklers, new ooring as it is a historic building, new paint and a commercial kitchen. e organization has multiple ways for those in the community to get involved.

“Having more people see and know and be involved with [Movement 5280] would truly make a di erence,” said Harris.

With a goal to house up to 32 individuals, Slipher said the organization looks to provide assistance for 18 to 24 months.

“We try to be a support to all of the other nonpro ts so that when there are people in the cracks, we can help,” said Slipher. “ at is why we felt like doing transitional housing is our next step because we created such a family system here, that young people need that in order to thrive.”