Across the country there are children who go without a bed to sleep on. They end up sleeping on chairs, couches, a pile of blankets or directly on the floor.
Sleep in Heavenly Peace (SHP) is working on changing that, and the Kosciusko County chapter had its second bed build Saturday morning at the Bowen Center in Warsaw.
Planning and organizing for the builds didn’t happen overnight.
Preparing For Builds
Becky Kiphart, Kosciusko County chapter co-president, said, “We’ve actually been working at this since January. We went out to training in Utah. Before that, we were preparing and searching and investigating what it was all about. After we attended training, we came home and we’ve been working. We have a core team of volunteers that have come alongside us, and they have been working every weekend hours and hours and hours to prepare for that first build.”

    Kosciusko County Sheriff Jim Smith (L) and Senior Det. Sgt. Josh Spangle (R) saw boards for beds for children during the Sleep in Heavenly Peace bed build Saturday morning at the Bowen Center in Warsaw. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union
  

The goal is always to build 20 beds for the corporate builds. At the first build last week at Warsaw Community Church, they built 32, and Kiphart expected they would probably end up with over 20 once they were done Saturday.
The Bowen Center funded, hosted and supplied the volunteers for Saturday’s build, she said, so they shared the registration link with whoever they wanted to. As a result, there were volunteers from the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Office, Judge Karin McGrath, Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Kosciusko County, Warsaw Morning Breakfast Optimist Club, Department of Child Services and Mayor Jeff Grose.
Saturday’s build was scheduled for four hours and had 40 community volunteers. The first build had to be divided into two shifts because they had over 100 volunteers. Kiphart said having 40 to 50 volunteers is great for the assembly line they use to make the beds.
“They are all exactly the same,” she said of the beds. “We use the same plan. It is a Sleep in Heavenly Peace plan, and we have jigs, all kinds of things that they supply, and they want us to all do it exactly the same, no matter where you’re from.”
Two beds can fit together to make a bunk bed.
Volunteers And Donations
There are over 300 SHP chapters across the nation and they all build the beds the same. There are only about nine chapters so far in Indiana. All the beds made in Kosciusko County stay in Kosciusko County.
“Any donations, any beds that we build, it’s all for our county,” Kiphart said.
The biggest struggle for the chapter has been making it possible for the public to volunteer.

    Bowen Center Chief Financial Officer Jay Baumgartner (L) sands a board during the Sleep in Heavenly Peace bed build Saturday morning at the Bowen Center in Warsaw. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union
  

“We are so honored that so many people want to volunteer, and it’s such a great community, so we are working very hard to get some community events where those registration links will be public, and then it will be on our website, it will be on our Facebook page and then anybody who has a desire to help can come and help,” Kiphart said.
The website address is https://shpbeds.org/chapter/in-kosciusko/.
Volunteers do not need to have any skills to participate. “We have our core team of volunteers that come to each build that run the stations, and they’ll get you in there and you get you involved. It’s for everybody,” Kiphart said.
Anyone needing a bed can find the application on the website. Once a person applies for a bed, she said they have teams that will call them and eventually deliver the bed.
“We’re kind of backed up right now because it is opened by zip codes, and so when we were able to open the zip codes once we had beds in inventory - which has only been a week - we opened just three zip codes to start with and we’ll continue to open zip codes until the whole county is being served,” she said.
Two beds were delivered last week, both singles, to two different families. Not only does SHP deliver the beds, but they also deliver the mattress and bedding. “It’s all set for the child when we leave,” Kiphart said.
She said they appreciate all the volunteers and donations.
Bowen Center Support
“The Bowen Center has been wonderful. They immediately jumped in and they really have a heart to serve this community, so it’s been a great thing. They even bought shirts for their volunteers today so they all got a shirt,” Kiphart said.

    CASA of Kosciusko County Executive Director Erin Rowland Jones (second from left), along with members of her staff and Warsaw Mayor Jeff Grose (second from right) sand boards during the Sleep in Heavenly Peace bed build Saturday morning at the Bowen Center in Warsaw. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union
  

Mike Murphy, senior director for Bowen Center in Kosciusko County, said, “When we were looking at Sleep in Heavenly Peace’s mission of no kid sleeps on the floor, it really just resonated with us. We’re trying to reunify families that maybe have been split. We’ve seen firsthand families that the children don’t have beds. Children have been removed because of a situation, and we’re working to restore those families, and there’s just so many times we see the need. This was really a tangible way for us to get involved and give back to our community, which is just huge for us and our mission.”
He said the bed build has really become a community project. Bowen Center had about 15 members of its Kosciusko County team at Saturday’s build, including some executives, but they also had volunteers outside of Bowen.
“So it’s really become a community partner event,” Murphy stated, adding that the Bowen Center could do another bed build in the future, potentially in the northern part of the county. “I’m pretty confident it could be a yearly process for us.”
Bowen Center Chief Financial Officer Jay Baumgartner said, “Obviously, we are here to help those in need in the community, and this is clearly an area of need, and we want to be a part of that.”
Personally, he said, “I love helping. That’s why I’ve been at the Bowen Center all these years.”
First-Hand Knowledge
McGrath said a project like the bed build is just “an amazing opportunity to be hands-on with what we talk about all the time - reaching needs in the community. So much of what we do though is working the long game, trying to help families in need, reunify families, so forth. This is just a hands-on tangible way to put action behind what we know we should be doing, helping our community.”
A number of people from the community come together for the build with a common goal.

    Cindy Romine brands a bed with the letters SHP (Sleep in Heavenly Peace) during the SHP bed build Saturday morning at the Bowen Center in Warsaw. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union
  

“It’s just a really positive thing. It gives everyone an opportunity to pitch in and accomplish something that is a benefit to our community, right here in our town,” McGrath stated.
SHP’s slogan is no child sleeps on the floor. McGrath said she would venture to guess that there are some people in the community who have a hard time wrapping their brain around the idea that there are kids in this community who do sleep on the floor.
“I know that’s a reality because I see it in the course of the work I do. I see the photos of the living conditions and I see that ratty pile of blankets in the corner that is actually the bed for the child or the children that live in that home. So it is actually a real thing. It’s here in our community and we have a way to meet that need,” she said.
Sheriff Jim Smith, who volunteered Saturday with several deputies from the sheriff’s office, said when he first read about the not-for-profit, he looked at his wife and told her it was exactly what the community needed.
“Over my years of being an officer and going to different houses, a lot of this resonates with us, and there’s a lot of kiddos out there who don’t have a bed to sleep on, so what better not-for-profit than something like this,” he said. “And if you look around and see all the community members out here, being involved in this, it’s obvious that they all feel the same way. It puts a smile on your face to see so many people coming together and it’s a testament to how great this community is, coming together for a cause for our own - the kiddos in our community who need a bed to sleep on.”
Getting his deputies to volunteer on a Saturday morning wasn’t a “hard sale,” he said.
“I think there’s such compassion with our team that we have at the sheriff’s office. I told them what I was going to do and I wanted to be a part of this, and it didn’t take much twisting of the arm. They all feel the same way,” Smith said. “Over the years, you run across calls of service and you go into these homes that the kiddos are sleeping in the living room, they’re all piled up on the floor and that sort of thing. This really speaks to a lot of our hearts, so it didn’t take much pressure to get them out here to be a part of it.”
Grose said he was invited to the build and said yes to be a “neighbor serving neighbors, cultivating community.”
“Bowen Center, the leadership, said, ‘hey, that’s what we’re doing here, would you like to come out and serve?’ And it was an immediate yes and I put it on my calendar,” he said. “... It’s community helping. Back to teaching, I’m the teacher, the most valuable resource in any community is youth.”

    What a Sleep in Heavenly bunk bed looks like after a build but before the mattress and bedding are added. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union
  

Grose said volunteering for the build was a way for him to practice what he’s been preaching since becoming mayor.
CASA of Kosciusko County Executive Director Erin Rowland Jones said there’s actually quite a need for beds for children.
“When children are removed from their homes, the Department first looks to place them with relatives, and so a lot of these relatives or kinship - people that have a pre-existing relationship with the child - they don’t always get the same type of financial stipends that foster families do. I think some law recently has changed that, but they oftentimes have a lot of needs for beds, for clothing, for things when they’re taking on these kids they may not have anticipated,” she said.
CASA of Kosciusko County served 155 abused and neglected children last year. “And I can guarantee you 20-25% of them probably needed a bed at some time, if not more. And this year has been quite busy. In the last four to six weeks, we’ve been assigned to almost 26 new kids, but, again, they’re being placed a lot of times with kinship that aren’t prepared to take on these kids. So to have an organization like this that can provide them with beds is huge,” Rowland Jones stated.
She volunteered Saturday with a group from CASA. April is Child Abuse Prevention Month.
It Takes A Village
Kiphart said SHP can’t do this alone.
“It takes community and we bring our core team. We’re totally mobile, so anyone, especially companies that want to support a build, we bring it to you, and we’re really working on those public community events. So we just need a place to put it - parking lots, wherever,” Kiphart stated.
She said she was thankful for all of those who have come forth and donated. Those donations stay in the county and all are being used for the beds.
“We’re going to get every kid off the floor. That’s our mission statement: No kid sleeps on the floor in our county,” Kiphart said.