We think of hotels as places where we go to relax and sleep while on vacation. Christian photographer Jeremy Cowart, however, has an idea for a hotel that goes beyond that: a place that will serve as a testament to God's love for mankind.
Cowart has seen the world in his quest for perfect pictures. He has photographed a wide variety of people: from pop star Britney Spears in 2009 to survivors of the powerful earthquake that rocked Haiti in 2010.
Throughout these journeys, Cowart — who was named by The Huffington Post as "The Most Influential Photographer in the Web" — has stayed in countless hotels. From this, he came out with the idea of developing a hotel that goes beyond being a lodging for a night — a hotel with a purpose, literally.
Driven by this idea, the photographer recently launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to build a place in Nashville, which he called "Purpose Hotel," mainly to help those in need.
"The world knows Christians by our judgment, not by our love, for the most part, and I want to change that. I want to build a hotel where we're working with and inviting people into the hotel of all belief systems and all skin colors and all backgrounds," Cowart said, as quoted by Religion News.
He envisions every aspect of Purpose Hotel to be a means to help others. For instance, he wants blankets to be used in the rooms to be sewn by survivors of human trafficking. He wants to tap companies that help marginalised groups for the hotel's pieces of furniture. He even wants the hotel's fountain to help the cause of a nonprofit organisation that seeks to provide access to safe water.
Aside from sleeping rooms, Cowart also wants the Purpose Hotel to have coworking spaces, where cause-oriented groups can meet.
To further turn his vision into reality, the photographer is also talking to major nonprofit organisations like Giving Keys, Compassion International, Food for the Hungry, International Justice Mission and Thistle Farms. His pitch: these groups can help build the hotel, which will help their causes, too.
"Even though it's not a Christian hotel, it certainly has a lot of core Christian values. It's all about outreach and loving our neighbor and feeding the poor," Cowart said. "I wish a lot of churches out there would follow the hotel model."
