Having grown up in the Flathead Valley, Rachelle Morehead wanted to come home and help the youth in her community. At the end of December, she had the opportunity to pursue this goal as the new executive director of Sparrow’s Nest, the only home for unaccompanied homeless youth in the state of Montana.

Sparrow’s Nest launched in 2016 as a completely community-funded, full-time home for unaccompanied homeless teenagers in the Flathead Valley. The organization’s former executive director, Jerramy Dear-Ruel, stepped down from his position to become a consultant for nonprofits throughout the state and the surrounding region. Morehead, a Whitefish native, found the position an ideal fit for her background and professional training.

“I really just knew I wanted to help people and work with people,” even early on, she said. After graduating from Whitefish High School, she earned a community and public health degree from Montana State University.

After college, she stayed in Bozeman and worked with pre-school and teen programming at the YMCA, which inspired her interest in helping the teen demographic. She also became immersed in the nonprofit world, interning with the Central Asia Institute, the nonprofit made famous by Greg Mortenson’s book “Three Cups of Tea.” She built the organization’s planned giving program—which asks donors to write a nonprofit into their wills—“from the ground up.”

Through this “crash course on how to ethically run a nonprofit,” she realized, “something I could really do is fundraising and nonprofit development.”

She felt compelled to bring her newfound skills back to her hometown, so she moved back to the Flathead where she worked as a child protection specialist and a territory manager for the blood donation center Vitalant. Through her work with disadvantaged youth throughout the valley, she became familiar with the plight of homeless teenagers and the Sparrow’s Nest’s efforts to help them.

“It made me understand more what this organization was about, and that’s when I was like ‘OK, this is a cool place to be,” she recalled.

When the Sparrow’s Nest executive director position opened, it seemed like a perfect fit for her nonprofit experience, local knowledge and love for the community.

Sparrow’s Nest operates a house with eight beds for individuals between the ages of 13 and 19 who are homeless. The process to move into its Kalispell home requires a referral, an application and an interview to determine if the location is a good fit. Teens in the home must meet certain requirements, including school enrollment. At the home, full-time staff provides supervision, access to health screenings, cooking, homework help, transportation and an array of other services to residents.

“In reality, we’re kind of taking on the role of mom and dad,” Morehead explained.

Overall, Sparrow’s Nest aims to provide “safe and supportive housing” for these vulnerable young people. The ultimate goal is “trying to make sure they are contributing members of society once they leave our program,” Morehead said. “We want you to be able to jump right out of this program and into the world and be successful and start breaking that cycle of homelessness.”

Since opening its doors in 2016, the nonprofit has made strong headway toward this goal. Sparrow’s Nest not only provides basic necessities and teaches life skills to its young residents—who stay, on average, for about three to five years—but also offers support, preparation and requirements of residency. That has resulted in a 99% high school graduation or GED rate for Sparrow’s Nest students.

“We have students that have gone on to help organizations and nonprofits in other communities,” Morehead added. “They are giving back and they do see the need. And they do see that they can help people the way they have been helped.

“The national average is 75% of homeless high school students drop out,” Morehead reported. “We’ve really kind of flipped that statistic in our community, at least as far as the population we’re serving.”

According to the Youth Behavior Risk Survey conducted through schools by the Montana Office of Public Instruction, there are at least 350 homeless teenagers currently in the Flathead Valley. However, Morehead pointed out that the nature of conducting this study through schools almost inevitably leaves out those who are not enrolled in school or have other tumultuous circumstances related to homelessness.

“There’s a very large possibility that number is bigger,” she said. Morehead, who graduated with a class of 112 students, pointed out, “Three times my graduating class is out on the streets. It’s a scary number.”

While Sparrow’s Nest has limitations on the number of students it can house and restrictions about being enrolled in school and other factors, it also offer services and referrals for the teenagers it can’t accommodate. Unaccompanied homeless youth can receive hygiene products and get in touch with counselors and other resources without living in the Sparrow’s Nest home.

“We have eight beds in our house, so we can serve eight students,” she said bluntly. “But there’s so many others out there.”

“We’ve all been teenagers at one point in our lives and there’s so much that goes into their day-to-day and how stressful just being in that 13-to-19 age range can be. I can’t imagine what that looks like if you also don’t have a place to sleep at night,” she said.

A large part of Sparrow’s Nest’s initiatives—especially now that the nonprofit has added Morehead and her nonprofit expertise—is fundraising and community outreach. “We’re 100% community-funded,” she said. “We’re completely reliant on the generosity of this community.”

The biggest fundraising and awareness event of the year, When the Night Comes, took place in November. The event encourages community members to secure sponsorship to sleep outside for a night to generate funds for the organization and raise awareness of the hardships homeless individuals face every day. This year, the event raised $60,000 between 30 participants.

Sparrow’s Nest also participates in the Great Fish Challenge in Whitefish and operates a monthly donor program with a minimum of $10 a month, which they are looking to expand. Part of Morehead’s new direction with the organization will be increasing its social media and marketing strategies to reach more donors like these.

But as Morehead gets settled into her new role, she hopes to eventually be able to broaden Sparrow’s Nest’s reach throughout the valley. “When this organization first started, their goal was to have a house in every community in this valley,” she explained. Right now, the Kalispell location is their only home. In the next five to 10 years, Morehead hopes to be able to open a second residence in another community in the valley, “so we can serve more students.”

And despite the limits, Morehead insists that any teenager experiencing homelessness can find help and resources from the Sparrow’s Nest staff, even if living in the Kalispell home isn’t an option for everyone.

She said she’s looking forward to being able to have these conversations and find these solutions for teenagers in the area where she grew up. “I’m just really, really excited to be part of this organization and moving forward with them,” she said.

Reporter Bret Anne Serbin may be reached at bserbin@dailyinterlake.com or 758-4459.