Northern Nevada Moses Project

Elishia Gift is the biological mother of 3, step-mother to 1, foster mother to 5 and grandmother to 1 beautiful grandchild. Running a household of 12 is chaotic on its best day, to add to the chaos, she runs a non-profit organization that she and her husband started from the ground up. Today, Northern Nevada Moses Project is a thriving nonprofit that strives to support a community in need. This is how it started. August 2020 Elishia Gift and her husband Jon Gift became licensed foster parents in the state of Nevada. They would soon learn just how unprepared they were for foster children and learn just how much support children placed in care needed. Many children come with nothing but the clothing on their back. It became painfully obvious to the Gift family, that there was an overwhelming need for support in rural Northern Nevada for foster children, foster families, homeless youth, and families in crisis. By September 2020, Northern Nevada Moses Project was born. In March of 2021, Northern Nevada Moses Project was founded officially on State, City and Federal levels from the ground up. March 2021 a fellow foster parent started the Reno branch, under the new official 501(c)3 status. June 2022, Elishia and Jon opened the Foster Boutique in downtown Elko. June 2022, a fellow foster parent started the Fernley branch under the 501(c)3. October 2022, the Northern Nevada Moses Project added an emergency pantry in Elko, soon to be one in Spring Creek. January 2023, a former foster youth started the Winnemucca branch under the 501(c)3. In just over 2 years the Northern Nevada Moses Project has grown enough to cover most of rural Northern Nevada’s foster community with 4 different branches. In 2022, 357 children were given support in the form of clothing, shoes, beds, bedding, food, toiletries, gift cards, cleaning supplies, furniture, and miscellaneous requests. Northern Nevada Moses project is currently run by foster parents and former foster youth that donate their time and resources selflessly. This is all done to raise confidence levels of foster children, giving these children back a sense of power and ease some of the uncertainty that comes with being placed into foster care or having the stigma of further impoverished conditions. It is a labor of love, with all of our support coming solely from community support. It is truly humbling to see so many people and businesses come together to support our most vulnerable population!

Hello my name is Tabitha Stanley. I was born and raised in Elko,NV. I by am a mom to 3 beautiful kids and also a wife to my husband Justin Stanley. I love to volunteer and give back to the community. I also run Turkey For Kids. Also love being on the e board of the Northern Nevada Moses Project .

Melissa Holbert was born in Durango, Colorado in 1990. Her family moved to Elko, Nevada when she was one year old and she considers it her “HOME”. She went to Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada and graduated in 2011 with her Associates of Applied Sciences with an emphasis on welding technology. She worked in the trades industries for nine years and pursued her career which took her to San Antonio,Texas in 2018. She lived there for two and a half years until she married Levi Holbert in September of 2020 and they were expecting their first child, at which point they decided to move back home to be closer to family. She started working with the Gift family during the summer of 2022, through a program called Foster The City, which was adopted by her church. The vision of Foster The City is to come alongside foster children and families to help form a support network by supporting them in practical ways as well as wrapping them with prayer. Melissa saw what a huge need there was in her community for a program like The Moses Project and began helping out however she could with the nonprofit as well. When the Gift family made the decision to move to South Dakota, they approached her and asked her to prayerfully consider taking on a bigger role in the nonprofit, so that it could continue to serve the community and care for as many children and families as possible. “I am humbled and honored and joyfully accept this responsibility! It is my hope and prayer that we can continue to carry on John and Elishia‘s vision and come alongside our most precious and vulnerable!” ~Melissa Holbert