AMHERST — With the mantra, “No kid sleeps on the floor in our town,” Sleep in Heavenly Peace has a new local chapter, the first in the state, with its goal to provide free beds and bedding to children in need.

Hillsborough County chapter President David Sodders, who lives in Amherst, discussed the evolution of creating a chapter in New Hampshire.

“When you show interest in starting a chapter, you define your chapter’s boundaries by zip codes,” he said. “I looked at a lot of chapters around the country to see what kind of coverage they had, and I chose Hillsborough County as my area of coverage. You don’t want it to be too large because you find you have more demand than you can possibly make beds for.”

Sodders looked at the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data, with some 400,000 people who live in the county, versus the national average of kids who don’t have bed, which is 2% or 3%.

“For Hillsborough County, that translated to 2,000 kids under the age of 18 who don’t have beds of their own,” he said. “Many times, these kids are sleeping with a parent, or siblings. In lots of cases, they’re sleeping on a couch, on a pile of clothes. Some sleep on a blanket on the floor, and some kids don’t even have pillows. It’s amazing — you don’t realize situations like this. It’s unfortunate that it’s out of the kids’ control. And that 2,000 is a big enough number to address, but it’s still a manageable number, so that’s how we define the boundaries.”

Members of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization essentially find free beds, (twin beds or bunks) and bedding or mostly, build the beds themselves with the help of a core group of supporters.

“If you are a family in need, typically the kids that we serve are the same ones where the families, typically a one-parent family, also need some support and supplementation for food and shelter for the kids,” he said. “Beds are kind of a luxury.”

Part of their mission is for SHP to make the organization known to families in need. To do that, officials went to organizations around the county to spread awareness.

“A good example is ‘Friends of Forgotten Children,’ up in Concord,” Sodders said. “They provide food and clothing for families such as these. I met with their director there, and told her who we were, so she’ll be posting our ‘make beds’ poster in their plant aware of what we do.”

“Our main mission is getting the word out — who we are, what we do,” he added.

For those who don’t have access to a personal computer, “you can call me, for example, and we can fill out the application through a phone interview. That application that we have online, formally recognizes the need for this particular family for one or more beds. This application gets flagged at the national level, and assigns a chapter based on the zip code. We have 31 different towns in Hillsborough County, so if any of those requests fall into my zip code coverage, I get notified right away,” Sodders added.

This is no small undertaking and Sodders said that while one can do this on their own, “You’re not going to make much progress. You have to market what you’re doing; you have to buy materials and talk to the people at Lowe’s, and Home Depot, and you have to get tools and lumber.”

The organization’s first core team-build day took place with 15 volunteers on June 15.

“We had a safety demonstration and instructed our helping volunteers how to assemble the beds,” he said. “Then, we had to stain all the parts of the bed, assemble the headboards, that sort of thing. With SHP, it’s really a community effort.”

The beds are acquired through multiple locations.

“We try to get supplies as cheaply as possible,” Sodders said. “I contacted many organizations around here and they’re willing to make quilts and blankets for these kids free of charge. And we make deals with different local vendors to get mattresses and pillow and basic bedding with deep discounts.”

SHP also has agreements with major tool suppliers, such as DeWalt. And often, entire truckloads of lumber are donated.

“Each chapter finds its own methods of providing bed lumber, mattresses, and bedding as cheaply as possible,” he said. “We don’t deliver used mattresses or bedding because of bed bugs and things like that. Everything we provide is new.”

People are encouraged to make donations.

“Our success is built on two things: The beds and bedding that we give away is always free of charge. So, we seek donations — you can donate $5 for a pillow, or $10 for a blanket, or you can actually donate money for a bed. You can also get donations through business sponsorships in the area that want to donate X-number of beds,” Sodders said.

SHP is also trying to create a community build day at a local park in Amherst.

“Once we have enough funding, we can buy all the materials and build some beds,” he said “There are also examples of Eagle Scout projects across the country who will build 10 or 20 beds in a community environment after they’ve raised the funding for us. And we can apply for grants.”

Sodders said he has never been a part of a charitable foundation before, but finds the work rewarding.

“I come from an aerospace background,” he said. “This is all new ground for me. I’m learning as I go. But the payoff is when you deliver the beds to these kids. It makes all the effort incredibly worthwhile.”

For more information, contact Sodders at 603-264-7326, or david.sodders@shpbeds.org.

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