Seven countries in five years: Montgomery's HateLess Foundation goes international

When Jarvis Provitt started the HateLess Foundation in 2016, resources were extremely limited.

He had no investors or grant funding, no network of volunteers or board members to lean on. HateLess was just himself and a handful of his friends walking around Montgomery on foot, looking for ways to help. These “missions” ranged from free yard work to cooking dinner for a hungry family, and in Provitt’s mind, each one was a small way to show love to a neighbor in need.

“I'm always saying that God, Jeremiah 29:11 is real: He has a plan, and that's his plan,” Provitt said. "My plan was very small, but his plan was something that blew my mind."

In the last eight years, the nonprofit has grown exponentially. HateLess established a headquarters in Atlanta, founded branches in seven other countries and expanded into investments like agriculture and a bottled water company.

With all the growth came some restructuring as well. This year, Provitt divided HateLess into two halves: the nonprofit HateLess Foundation and the for-profit HateLess Industries. Both work to support the mission of feeding, clothing and educating every community.

Expanding into Africa

The idea of spreading HateLess beyond Montgomery was one that Provitt kept in mind early on, but the challenge was that he couldn’t really identify the nuanced problems of any community other than his own.

He grew up here, so he knew what Montgomery needed. He could pinpoint who needed support because he was keenly attuned to his city’s pulse.

To replicate the service initiative in other communities, he needed to find the leaders who lived there — the ones who understood their towns the same way Provitt understood his.

He found nonprofits that he respected in a number of different countries, and he reached out to their directors and founders to see who wanted to work with him. That’s how he ended up with HateLess branches in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia.

In each place, Provitt found local leaders, asked them what problems they wanted to fix and found the support to do just that.

Efforts in Africa began around 2019 with the launch of HateLess Liberia. There, the immediate focus was on providing food and clothes for children.

2020 brought on the headquarters move to Atlanta, and in 2021, HateLess expanded into Sierra Leone.

In 2022, two branches in separate parts of Zimbabwe sprung up. Area directors Believe Tasara and Nobetter Ndaira said they help pay for kids' school fees, provide school supplies, advocate against child marriage and educate the community to prevent teenage pregnancies. They also work to make sure hunger doesn’t keep any kid away from receiving an education by offering meals to kids who need them.

“We thank God for HateLess,” Ndaira said. “We hope we can continue to shine this light.”

Investing in Malawi

Separate from the HateLess Foundation’s community service work in Malawi, Provitt also hopes to make some money there with HateLess Industries. Through a subsidiary named Promise Land Investors Group, he purchased a 16-acre farm and has employed two people to run it.

Not only does he expect the land to appreciate in value, but HateLess Industries is also selling crops Malawi is known for, like maize. The farm had its first harvest in April.

“Half of the harvest we designated to pay back some expenses which we incurred along the way, and some of the harvest was given to the villagers around where the farm is situated,” HateLess International Director Innocent Chando said. “We always plan to give back to the community.”

Chando also operates his own nonprofit to provide shoes to kids who need them in his country.

Provitt said he sees so much value in places in Africa because they’re still developing, and he wants to be part of those efforts.

“It's developing at a rate that is very vast and very fast," Provitt said. "By 2040, it's going to be a whole other ball game over there.”

Reaching Montgomery’s kids

The core of HateLess is still where it all began, with the people in Montgomery, Alabama.

"People don't mean to, but they'll try to put you in a box. Just because people see me posting about Atlanta and Zimbabwe and these places, that doesn't mean the programs aren't still going on in Montgomery as well," Provitt said. "We're still feeding kids. We're still speaking life into kids in this area. That's still going on. It's just that God has allowed us to grow."

Around the time Provitt moved the headquarters to Atlanta and began his investment group, he approached his lifelong friend and longtime HateLess volunteer Darrius Matthews to ask a simple question: “Do you want to run Hateless Montgomery?”

After giving it some thought, Matthews said yes, and he became Montgomery’s area director in 2023.

In addition to quarterly events to feed the hungry, he also leads volunteers in regular visits to the Montgomery County Youth Detention Facility on Air Base Boulevard. There, they talk to the children and try their best to show them some hope.

“It might be planning goals for when they get out,” Matthews said. “Just giving them little life lessons to help build so they won't be in the same situation, so they won't keep repeating the same stuff that they were doing before. We don't let them become a product of their environment.”

Recently, a teenage boy whom Matthews had met in the facility approached him at the grocery store. He got released a few weeks prior and was taking Matthews’ advice: going to school and hanging out with people who wanted to do good in the world.

“If I wasn’t from Montgomery, and I hadn’t seen some of the stuff that goes on here, it would be a lot harder for me to talk to these kids,” Matthews said. “It is hard growing up in Montgomery, especially if you don’t have anybody to help you out.”

Where Hateless is going next

Provitt has so many ideas for the future of HateLess that it can be hard for him to focus on just one.

The Promise Land Investors Group is vetting other potential land purchases across the globe. Solve The Problem Roofing is always finding more roofs to repair across Montgomery. The Drip water bottles are for sale in Cloverdale’s Vintage Cafe, and Provitt is looking for ways to further develop the brand.

Beyond the business ventures, Provitt said any number of countries are possibilities for future HateLess branches. And every HateLess branch is preparing for a worldwide feeding day later this year where they aim to feed over 5,000 people worldwide on Nov. 7.

Sometimes, he thinks back to the first vision of HateLess he had in 2016. It was the idea of a nonprofit that spread love across the globe by building little acts of kindness into something large-scale.

“I’m here now, and myself back in 2016, what would I have told myself? Continue to believe. My faith got me here,” Provitt said. “It’s everything that I saw.”

Hadley Hitson covers children's health, education and welfare for the Montgomery Advertiser. She can be reached at hhitson@gannett.com. To support her work, subscribe to the Advertiser.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Love more, hate less: Montgomery-founded group expands internationally