Humphreys Street, a social enterprise of Harvest Hands CDC, was born out of a desire to raise up leaders within our neighborhood by creating jobs, providing mentorship opportunities, and teaching job skills that empower youth such as customer service, marketing, and craftsmanship.
Harvest Hands is a catalyst for Christ-centered, holistic community development working alongside our neighbors to further education, healthy living, spiritual formation, and economic development in South Nashville.
Why we do what we do? Trying to provide pathways out of poverty for children and youth in South Nashville (specifically in Napier/Sudekum government housing, with an avg. income of $6,500 per year and highest rate of crime/violence in the city). We believe in the potential of our students and create opportunities for empowerment instead of direct charity…. we create jobs, we don’t really do handouts.
We believe in turning gentrification into justice—can’t control the development of Nashville and cities like Nashville, but you can channel the change to benefit those that are pushed out if you are creative and you have access to resources.
We have been really impacted by the Covid-19, we can’t be without students and this has forced us to get creative in how we support them emotionally, educationally, nutritionally….
You name it, we have had to figure out how to adjust the ways that we serve our community. We also have been hit, we run a coffee shop that employs neighbors and we had to shift to carry out or close (which we totally understand and support because we believe everyone has to do their part for us all to get well and healthier as a community)….
But all of this combined means that we can’t employ as many folks….we aren’t receiving as many donations….we have many folks that support us that are in a fear mode and we are not sure how that will ultimately impact us….
Nashville is such an amazing town filled with such generous people….i believe that we will come through this stronger….but it will require us to be highly adaptive (as we are doing) and we may have to move to the model where we have lots of people that give us $20, $50, $100 gifts instead of larger gifts. Certainly, we will take and need larger gifts, but we need everyone to work together for us to remain faithful to children and families of Napier during this unprecedented time.
Learn more: www.harvesthandscdc.com www.humphreysstreet.com
