Nonprofit Spotlight

People Loving Nashville finds ways to continue serving throughout the pandemic

BY BAILEY BASHAM

Colleen Lampa hangs a grocery bag on the doorknob, knocks and steps back about six feet. She waits for an answer at the door, but she must not have knocked loud enough. Inside the bag is a cheeseburger, a bag of chips and a bottle of water. Lampa says she would much prefer to sit down with the apartment’s resident, share a meal and catch up on life, but in the era of COVID-19, the safest way to remind people that she and her team at People Loving Nashville are still around is to from a distance.

“We’re still here. We may not be able to hang out, but we’re here,” she says. “We give a phone number out for anyone that wants to talk. We don’t do as much Zoom and FaceTime as we should but a lot of it is phone calls, emails, texts. Sometimes we’ll drop by and stay at a distance. Once things started opening a little more, people started coming back. The one-on-one stuff has been really important.”

Lampa and her siblings started People Loving Nashville in 2008 after sit

ting back, tummies full of Thanksgiving turkey and dressing, and realizing how much they still had left. That abundance seemed stark in comparison to the need of so many in the city.

“We saw this need, and we thought, ‘Why not help?’ It’s part of the DNA of who we are, and more than that, God told us to. He’s very clear on this one. If we look where he is looking, it’s to the people on the streets, those lonely in their apartments, the women in prison — so that’s what we run after,” she says. “You don’t have to believe in God to come with us because at its core, this is just about caring for other people. We’re just handing a meal to someone who is hungry, but it’s humbling and miraculous and beautiful. I am constantly in awe of the things that people have survived and carry every day, but still they show up. They’re still moving.”

People Loving Nashville is a 501(c)3 nonprofit aimed at meeting some of the basic needs of the people of Nashville, such as providing warm meals, distributing clothing and handing out hygiene products.

“The thing we’ve been doing the longest is the Monday night meal. Since that Thanksgiving in 2008, we’ve been packing up hot meals to share with anyone we found surviving the streets of downtown Nashville. It’s been every Monday since January of 2009 — we’ve never missed a Monday, which is really crazy to think about. The flood and tornadoes, snow storms, now the pandemic, we’ve been here through it all. Things have changed a lot, and we have to kind of just go with it,” Lampa says. “Now that we are bigger and more established, we do about 300 to 400 meals every Monday night.”

Over the years, Lampa says other organizations like Shower Up, the Nashville Street Barbers and The Street Dog Coalition have joined the effort.

“For the last few weeks, we’ve been doing a help desk as well. Somebody brings a laptop and helps folks fill out applications and anything they need to do online since the library is closed. A lot of it is helping people file for unemployment, but whatever people need, we’re doing everything we can to help in any way.”

Lampa says she and her siblings have had to reevaluate the way they connect with and serve people, but regardless of what happens next, they have no plans to miss a Monday.

“I moved here in 2008, and I’ve known a lot of people on the streets longer than anyone in Nashville. In my hard days, they’ve been there for me, and it’s me going to talk to my friends because I need some support. Maybe they have a home, maybe they don’t. It doesn’t matter when it comes to relationships,” she says. “Jesus told us to feed hungry people, so let’s do it. He told us to love other people, so let’s do it.”

For more information about People Loving Nashville or to support their work, visit peoplelovingnashville.com.