Nathan Reed, a 2003 Decorah High School graduate and 2018 graduate of Colorado State University, has been awarded a $10,000 grant from Texas Instruments honoring his work with the homeless in the Salt Lake City area. He is the son of Cheryl and Roger Reed of Decorah and resides in South Jordan, Utah, with wife Katie and son Wilder.
The following is a release from Texas Instruments in Lehi, Utah, about his award.
Awardee Nathan Reed – who volunteers in the Salt Lake City area to serve the unsheltered and the hungry – and five finalists have been recognized with a 2022 TI Founders Community Impact Award for outstanding contributions to the communities where we live and work.
The biennial award honors the company’s founders and their long history of philanthropy and volunteerism. Reed will receive a $10,000 grant from TI that he will direct to the nonprofit organization theothersidevillage.com.
Reed, a process owner in wet process at the Lehi manufacturing site in Utah, demonstrates a remarkable commitment to work with the unsheltered and the hungry in the Salt Lake City area, which, like many large U.S. cities, is experiencing a rise in homeless populations.
“I serve this specific community because at one time I was very close to losing my home and have been on food stamps before,” said Reed. “I know how a safe home and knowing where your next meal will come from has a tremendous effect on the rest of your life. I believe every human has inherent value, and it is easy to fall into an unsheltered situation, and very hard to get back out of it.”
Reed’s efforts include volunteering hundreds of hours with the Nomad Alliance Organization, a nonprofit that uses “compassion in action for people on the street” in northern Utah; collecting more than 100,000 grocery bags to weave together sleeping mats for the homeless; and facilitating a street-to-farm program that provides unsheltered people with room and board in exchange for helping on a farm.
He also helped save seven tons of produce from going to waste by connecting with area nonprofits and food service businesses to distribute fruits and vegetables nearing the end of their shelf life to the hungry in Salt Lake and Utah counties.
“This is where I was able to make the biggest impact,” he said. “An average of three days a week I would pick up an entire SUV load of produce and distribute it to places such as Community Action Services, CIRCLES Utah County, CIRCLES Salt Lake County, The Inn Between – a homeless hospice, Utah AIDS Foundation, senior centers, and several other nonprofits that could use fresh produce quickly.”
Reed, a problem-solver and collaborator, knows that broader, sustainable solutions for homelessness are needed. He has facilitated discussions with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Salt Lake Valley Coalition to End Homelessness to discuss and uncover service gaps and root causes of homelessness. He has also partnered with Black Lives Matter Salt Lake City to learn how mobile micro homes are providing temporary, safe housing solutions.
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