Last year, Daniel Phillips spent spring break at home in Searcy, Ark., doing nothing.
It was not an experience the Harding University sophomore was eager to repeat.
This year, Phillips, 19, and 12 other Harding students signed up for a program that brought them to Denver to work with the homeless.
The group partnered with Dry Bones, a local organization that ministers to homeless people between the ages of 12 and 25. Students who go on Harding University Spring Break Missions pay their own way, often through fundraising, said April Fatula, director of news services at Harding.
The reasons for choosing a mission bringing them to Denver in March are varied.
Co-coordinator Gerald Davis, a 21-year-old junior from Marietta, Ga., wanted to be someplace outside of the Bible Belt. Marideth Hunter, a 19-year-old from Searcy, chose it after her original trip, to Philadelphia, fell through. Phillips wanted a chance to work with Dry Bones and the population it serves.
“I knew of Dry Bones and knew they were a good organization,” he said.
This is the third time in six years that Harding students have come to Denver to help Dry Bones.
“Our goal is to give the college students a new perspective on life,” said Matt Wallace, director of Dry Bones. “We challenge them when they go back to where they’re from to take notice of the people on the margins of society.”
Such a perspective was one of the first they experienced upon arriving in Denver. Monday afternoon, Wallace led the students on a “turf tour” of downtown Denver.
“It was really eye-opening,” Davis said. “We were seeing where they slept and hid, and it was in the same places we were shopping the night before.”
Blending into the scenery is a skill many of the street youths have had to learn well. Some of them, Wallace said, are runaways or are wanted for other reasons.
Because of the youths’ leeriness, Wallace asked the photographer for The Denver Post to leave a picnic Tuesday. Within 10 minutes of the photographer’s departure, the group of five youths grew to about 25.
Zach Smith, an intern with Dry Bones, said members sometimes see at their events as many as 70 people, many of whom they know by name.
Tuesday’s picnic was the first opportunity for half of the Harding students to work directly with Denver’s homeless. Students took turns making sandwiches and introducing themselves.
The other half of the group was walking around downtown looking for people to take to a movie and get them out of the wind, Davis said.
“It all just reminds me of everything I take for granted, like a warm house to stay in,” said Hunter.
Urban Peak, another local group that serves homeless youths, estimates there are more than 1,400 people between the ages of 13 and 25 living on the streets in Denver on any given day.
“We’re here to serve at least some of them,” Phillips said.
Jenel Stelton-Holtmeier: 303-954-1661 or jsteltonholtmeier@denverpost.com
