It’s for Everyone: The Dallas Fellows

What Happens When Assumptions Become Relationships

Each summer at The Human Impact, we have the privilege of working with a group of young men—students who are part of The Dallas Fellows, a summer leadership program for rising college seniors that prepares young adults to lead within a Christian context. Monday through Thursday, they spend their days working in professional settings. Each Friday, they join us at The Human Impact.

This past June, as we started with six young men, we asked them about their assumptions regarding homelessness.

What causes it? What concerns you about spending time with people experiencing it? What do you hope to learn?

Their answers were thoughtful—and honest.

Some named poverty, mental illness, addiction, difficult circumstances or poor decisions as causes of homelessness. One worried about personal safety. Another admitted the possibility of “getting too close” to drugs or needles. Someone simply described volunteering with people experiencing homelessness as “maybe a dangerous opportunity.”

Others came hopeful, but still from a distance: wanting to understand homelessness better, grow their relational skills, or learn how to serve.

And week after week, something began to change.

They walked the streets. They listened. They learned names and stories. They spent time with our staff and our friends experiencing homelessness. On their last day with us, they even washed the feet of our friends experiencing homelessness, and allowed their feet to be washed too. They prayed for our friends and were prayed for. If they had reservations at the beginning of the summer, by the end, they had all gracefully stepped out of their comfort zones into what it means to truly love and see others—even the “least of these”— as Christ does.

They talked afterward about what they had seen, where they had felt uncomfortable, and what God might be teaching them through it.

By their final Friday, their answers sounded different.

When asked what stood out most about Streets Time, one Fellow wrote simply:

“Learning stories of other people and feeling appreciated and getting out of my comfort zone talking to others who struggle.”

Another named the importance of “eye level talking.”

They described the value of being vulnerable, listening without judgment and learning to see others differently. One Fellow said the summer had challenged them to “kill my pride, take my eyes off of myself and serve others”—even when doing so felt uncomfortable.

The word another chose to describe what had changed? Humility.

That is the transformation we hope for when we say It’s for Everyone.

The work of The Human Impact is certainly for our friends experiencing homelessness. But it is also for the volunteer who arrives unsure of what to say. For the student carrying assumptions they may not even realize they have. For the person who discovers that serving someone else also reveals something about their own heart.

One Fellow reflected at the end of the summer:

“I am more appreciative of my scenarios and life, also I am eager to not judge and make certain mistakes some people may have made. Also eager to serve more.”

They arrived asking questions about the homeless.They left talking about people.

About stories.

About vulnerability.

About humility.

About looking someone in the eye.

And perhaps that is one of the simplest ways the relational gap begins to close: not by learning everything there is to know about homelessness, but by getting close enough to know someone experiencing it.

Because friendship changes the way we see one another.

And that kind of transformation really is for everyone.