Our Story
Movement 5280 was launched in 2010 by Denver First Church of the Nazarene. A layman, Jon Tinniswood, who was a counselor at Third Way Youth Treatment Center shared with the Church’s pastor at the time, Shawn Siegfreid, that youth, many from the foster care system, and aging out from treatment centers, detention and shelters, and foster care itself, were homeless on the streets of Denver.
He dreamt of a day center in Denver that would become a safe and trusted place for homeless youth. Pastor Shawn brought Jon Tinniswood and Tina Hayhurst, youth pastor at Denver First Church together and they began dreaming together and within three months we rented a small building on South Colorado Boulevard and Colfax that we named Movement 5280. Jon continued as a therapist at Third Way, encouraging youth involvement at Movement 5280, and Tina became Executive Director.
Within weeks, 30-40 youth from treatment centers and unhoused came weekly to have a “family meal” and play video games, pool, and rest. Movement 5280 created programs designed to provide a “family of support” for youth and young adults, who had very little support system to help navigate the path to adulthood: a clothing bank, food pantry, mentorship, volunteerism and ownership.
Movement 5280 opened once a week to the unhoused community, all ages, for a hot meal and resources, and our youth became the servers and helpers. We also took people interested in attending church each Sunday to Denver First church.
In 2019, Movement 5280 became its own 501c3, an important step to expand our services and programs. We outgrew our space and moved to South Broadway in Denver, and then in 2019, to our next location on 3485 South Broadway in Englewood.
In the last several years, Movement 5280 has grown substantially in its outreach, volunteers, staff and financially. Many organizations and other churches have come alongside Movement 5280 both with volunteers, staffing and financial support.
Many of our young people who attended in the beginning of Movement 5280 are still part of our Movement 5280 family. They continue to volunteer, are in our Job Readiness program, and attend weekly Lost and Found Church.
While many have housing, and recognizing the unique challenges of our unhoused youth, Movement 5280 developed a job readiness program and Life skill classes for our young people to learn the necessary skills to maintain a job and become self-sustaining adults.
We built our programs around three themes: Survive, Thrive and Revive.
Survive is helping to meet the most basic needs: clean clothes, a hot shower, a “family style” meal, assistance with ID’s, birth certificates and social security cards.
In Thrive, personal navigators come alongside our young adults to help them identify their personal goals and dreams: a job, a certain skill they would like to pursue, GED, an apartment, mental health and recovery from addiction.
In Revive, we offer a weekly Christian church service, bible studies and Celebrate Recovery, a weekly Christ centered recovery program for those who are interested.
What we discovered is that many of our friends have had bad experiences or trauma related to “church” and in 2018 we began offering a church service at Movement 5280 open to our community that are young people named Lost and Found-a trusted and safe place to come “as you are” and find hope in Jesus.
While Movement 5280’s primary focus remains at-risk youth and young adults, in response to the Covid-19 Pandemic, Movement 5280 remained open and met outside behind our building to provide meals five days a week to our unhoused friends as well as our community who lockaed food resources.
Working with local partners in change the trend, we have been able to increase access to medical care, housing, severe weather safety and shelter. In partnership with RCVR church, we opened an off-site food bank called Englewood’s Table to provide food to families and individuals in Englewood. Englewood’s Table has been a second site for those working in our Job Readiness Program.
This past year our Movement 5280 family has been deeply impacted by the loss of four very involved family members of Movement 5280; one to murder, one to a tooth infection that caused a brain infection, one to severe health issues, and another from a physical assault.
These tragedies have further motivated our staff to provide on-site mental health and transitional housing. Last year we contracted three mental health therapists and an MSW candidate to provide Expressions of Art and Movement Therapy. We have one day a week dedicated to mental health.
We are taking significant steps to open our first transitional house for young men ages 21-29, we will name is Corey’s House, after our friend Corey who passed away from a brain infection. Our significant growth is allowing us to have greater impact and to reach more in the name of Christ in the Denver metro area.
