"No kid sleeps on the floor in our town," is one of the themes of Sleep in Heavenly Peace (SHP), which is a volunteer-driven nonprofit dedicated to building and delivering hand-made, fully furnished beds to children in need. 

SHP’s mission is to tackle “childhood bedlessness,” which the group calls a “hidden crisis” that affects an estimated 2-3% of children nationwide don’t have a bed of their own. That’s hundreds of thousands of kids sleeping on floors, couches, or sharing beds with siblings or caregivers every single night.  

Sleep in Heavenly Peace builds sturdy, volunteer-made wooden bed frames using lumber, typically assembling them with lag bolts and wooden dowels. Each fully furnished bed package includes a new mattress, pillows, and bedding sets to ensure children have a comfortable, safe place to sleep. 

Luke Mickelson, founder and executive director, started Sleep in Heavenly Peace in 2012. By the end of 2024, SHP had grown into a charity spanning 47 states with more than 300 chapters operating in 4 different countries. According to SHP, more than 140,000 kids in the US are waiting on volunteers to help them sleep on a bed tonight. To this point more than 350,000 beds have been delivered to children without a bed. But the need is great.

“While we’re celebrating 300,000 beds delivered, we’ve actually received more than one million bed applications since we started,” the organization said on their website. “Let that sink in for a moment. One million families have reached out to us, desperate to give their children a proper place to sleep.” 

 
At one event, on April 11 in Tallahassee, Florida, more than one-hundred bed building volunteers showed up to make beds for the Sleep in Heavenly Peace charitable organization. Since starting 8 years ago, the Tallahassee Chapter of Sleep in Heavenly Peace has built more than 4,000 beds for kids who don't have any. 

Chapter president John Cousins said they recently opened bed building hubs in Wakulla and Gadsden counties. "We could be doing more if we had more people behind the scenes to make it all happen. Because this just didn't happen. We were all here at 7 o'clock this morning to make it all happen." 

Saturday's build produced and distributed 50 bunk beds. Enough to give 100 local kids a bed to call their own, "because all children deserve a safe, comfortable place to lay their heads."