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March 3, 2025
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, March 3, 2025 (Gephardt Daily) — Members of Salt Lake City’s unsheltered community received a measure of relief, and a welcome dose of dignity, Sunday, thanks to the Nomad Alliance, the aptly named nonprofit advocacy group considered by many, including its professional peers, to be among Utah’s most formidable frontline fighters in the war on homelessness.
As a recent recipient of the Crossroads Urban Center‘s “Hell Raisers Award,” the group is perhaps best known for its “Warming Bus” — an emergency shelter on wheels, often seen parked in Salt Lake City’s most forlorn neighborhoods. It’s a space where staff members not only offer warm greetings to all who approach them, it’s also a warm and safe place to sleep on freezing winter nights.
They also provide hot meals, a restroom, cell phones for reaching loved ones, as well as direct links to other, larger, more traditional homeless relief agencies.
And they also provide a buffer zone from the cacophony on the streets, a place of relative calm, a place to center the mind.
On Sunday, the alliance brought the bus to Pioneer Park, where group volunteers, under the watchful eye of founder and Executive Director Kseniya Kniazeva, provided clothing, blankets, catered meals, haircuts, and even showers to the unsheltered. They also offered government phones, a Wi-Fi hotspot, charging stations, and applications for long-forgotten stimulus checks, as well as a syringe exchange courtesy of the Utah Harm Reduction Coalition.
While the Nomad supply drive provided material aid for those living on Salt Lake County’s streets, it also focused on mental health, striving to create a stress-free enjoyable outing, a reprieve of sorts, including a DJ who provided music for the sunny Sunday gathering.
Nomad’s volunteers had worked feverishly all of last week and into the night Saturday preparing for the event, something they do monthly. They turned the final push into a family affair, with couples, and even a kid in tow, as they took inventory of donated supplies and readied them for delivery.
Volunteer Shaun Davis, a U.S. Army veteran who joined the Nomad Alliance as part of a court-ordered community service sentence, said he never anticipated working to help the homeless, but he’s found the experience deeply moving. “While working with Nomad, the very first time I encountered a man who was on the street, confused, hungry and nowhere to turn, the simple act of feeding him and the gratitude he showed changed my life forever. I decided at that very moment I’d help this group do whatever they need. I literally put in 280 volunteer hours in about five months after that, and I’ve never looked back. And when I see a turnout like we have today, I’m all the more grateful. I’d encourage everyone to do what they can to take part in what we’re doing. It changed my life. It will change theirs, too.”
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