New student organization brings awareness to homelessness

Pictured at the first meeting of the Scholars United for the Homeless, from left, are Jennifer Brown, Heather Bertram, secretary Ashley Muench, Mikayla Lovin, recruitment officer Amanda Smith, president Adam Nakamoto, supply drive coordinator Jensen Lyons-Sabados, and Jonathan Kelley. Officers not pictured are vice-president Jacob Walkup and treasurer Kellie McCreight.

COOKEVILLE –Homelessness knows no boundaries, as anyone can be affected at any time.

Biochemistry pre-med major Adam Nakamoto realized this during his time volunteering at the Cookeville Rescue Mission. Through that experience, he found a desire to create a new student organization called Scholars United for the Homeless.

“We’ve been working since the beginning of the semester in getting this formed,” Nakamoto said.

The working group consists of Michelle Huddleston, service learning center assistant director; Luke Eldridge, operations director of the Cookeville Rescue Mission; Nakamoto and a variety of other interested charter members.

The group has a good diversity of majors, from mechanical engineering, sociology and English, to name a few.

“I’m pleased that so many students are interested in helping the homeless,” Nakamoto said. “I realized if I could enlist the help of multiple people, we can achieve a lot more,” Nakamoto said. “There are a lot of possibilities of things we could do.”

The group’s focus will be helping the Cookeville Rescue Mission. Nakamoto has a lot of ideas to do just that.

“We’d be helping in fundraisers, supply drives, raising awareness, volunteering and putting some members’ talents to good use,” he said.

Throughout his experience at the Rescue Mission, Nakamoto met a lot of people and created some good friendships.

“Luke encouraged me to create this group,” he said.

Nakamoto, who was home schooled in Dickson, was also inspired by a chapter in the Bible, Matthew 25.

“That is very inspiring to me,” he said.

The organization was chartered Nov. 14 with an election of officers.

For more information about the organization, email Nakamoto at abnakamoto42@students.tntech.edu.

Submit your story ideas to the Upper Cumberland Business Journal! via email.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.