‘Sleep in heavenly peace’: Bed project leads to building Monroe chapter

MONROE – Tim Taylor wants to start a Sleep in Heavenly Peace (SHP) chapter in Monroe. The volunteer group builds and delivers beds to children in need.

Their motto is: "No kid sleeps on the floor in our town!"

“Sleep in Heavenly Peace is a national nonprofit started up in 2012 with the main goal to build beds to distribute out into the community to children that do not have a bed,” Taylor said. “They’re co-sleeping or sleeping on an air mattress. They just don’t have their own personal beds.”

Taylor, a full-time flight nurse and part-time paramedic for Monroe Community Ambulance, discovered SHP on a Facebook post.

He made a call to find the closest chapter, Western Wayne County, and started volunteering his time. The Michigan chapter is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to building and delivering bunk beds to children in need.

Although there were no chapters serving Monroe, Taylor wanted to learn more about the organization. He agreed to spend some time with the president of the chapter delivering beds to children in need.

“Just seeing the joy in their face and the happiness in having their own bed because they literally had nothing,” Taylor said. “The first few homes I went in to, they were sleeping on a single air mattress that was shared by the entire family in the common living area of the apartment. Now, three kids had their own bed to sleep in. And from that point, I wondered 'What more can I do?'”

In 2022, Taylor began traveling to the Western Wayne Chapter to help build beds and later became a team leader. But he knew in the back of his mind, he wanted to start a chapter in his hometown.

“Working as a first responder out here, I go into homes and we don’t see from the outside what’s missing in the inside,” he said.

Recently, Taylor and a group of 65 volunteers met from 8 a.m. to noon on a Saturday at the 2|42 Community Church Monroe Campus on Telegraph Road to build beds. Their build goal was 50 beds.

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With support from Pastor Andy Mullikin, the church has allowed the group to use its property for storage of the beds and bedding.

Within the four-hour session, the group built 51 beds. Families worked together and children, ages 3-16, were encouraged to help with supervision.

Taylor said building locations vary based on availability. Many of the donations the group receives comes from corporate and private donations. A minimum of 100 volunteers are needed for each bed-building project.

“That can allow everybody to cover positions within the build and make it a pretty efficient build,” he said. “Families are welcome to help as long as children are supervised and safe.”

Taylor, along with close to a dozen committed volunteers from the county, is in the process of starting a Monroe chapter in June. Taylor will serve as president and Jennifer Scott of Dundee will be vice president. Until then, Western Wayne County will serve as the parent chapter.

“Then we will bridge that gap between Monroe and Western Wayne and we’ll start serving the downriver community between the two chapters,” Taylor said.

He said children without beds is a community problem and it takes a community to fix the problem.

“To have volunteers come out on a Saturday morning and donate their time knowing at the end of the day we’re going to have 50-plus children within the county sleeping in their own bed, it’s hard to put the feeing into words,” Taylor said. “It’s not about me. It’s not about any of the volunteers. At the end of the day, it’s about the kids. They don’t ask to be in the position that they are in.”

He said providing a bed and pillow to lay their head upon every night and get a peaceful night's sleep is one less worry for the child and that’s what makes being a part of SHP worth it.

For more information about SHP or to apply for a bed, volunteer or make a donation, log on to Sleep in Heavenly Peace or contact Tim Taylor at tim.taylor@shpbeds.org.

— Contact reporter Lisa Vidaurri-Bowling at lvidaurribowling@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Sleep in heavenly peace: Bed project leads to building Monroe chapter