Ozark Mission Project

Ozark Mission Project started nearly 30 years ago as a way to train people to do mission work and then go out and help those in need.

There were just 35 volunteers that first year at one camp in the Lawrence County community of Imboden. Now there are 12 camps every summer across the state with nearly 1,000 volunteers attending. Two weekend family camps also are held each spring and fall. A college-age mission trip is also sponsored in January.

Bailey Faulkner, executive director of the nonprofit since March 2014, said there is no other organization like it around. OMB is affiliated with the Arkansas Area United Methodist Church.

“We’ve grown from just a summer camp ministry to a year-round ministry, and we also have what we call ‘pop-up’ projects,” she said, adding that volunteers work with local homeless shelters and other service organizations.

At the camps, volunteers “are taught how to use a hammer and how to do handy skills like building a porch and building steps, as well as interacting with people,” she said.

Faulkner is just the second executive director OMP has had since it began in 1986. “Before that we were an all-volunteer organization,” Faulkner said, adding that OMP served about 420 people in 2014. “We’re about to celebrate our 30th year. I just don’t know very many organizations that have lasted as long as we’ve lasted and they didn’t have a full-time staff.”

To fully understand how OMP works, Faulkner went undercover to camp. “I did everything that the campers did in the hot Arkansas summer. I helped build a house and I helped build a wheelchair ramp. At that point I was hooked.”

OMP’s 2014 budget was $197,000, with nearly 76 percent of its funding coming from camper fees and 23 percent from gifts.