At Saline County’s Healing Waters Outreach Center, teens attend L.O.V.E Rocks, a weekly youth fellowship meeting.

In the two decades since Let Our Violence End (L.O.V.E.) was founded, the number of people whom the ministry serves has grown substantially. But in many ways, the need is every bit as profound as when Robert Holt first walked into the street to try and rescue a generation. “The kids today are facing far more pressure than even kids of 15 years ago,” he says. “Families are facing far more pressure. And it’s not necessarily pressure as much as it is division. I’m seeing more division in our country than I’ve ever seen. I love this country, but it’s more divided now than ever.”

Walking away from a lucrative business career in 1994, Holt sold off his possessions and founded L.O.V.E. in obedience to God’s call to minister to youth. It was at a particularly dangerous time in Little Rock’s history with gang activity, drugs and cults on the rise, and he positioned L.O.V.E. as a positive alternative, leveraging the power of mentorships and peer support as an intervention to destructive behaviors.

Such efforts are still the cornerstone of L.O.V.E.’s ministry, as staff and volunteers work with more than 6,000 youth. Holt said time has done nothing to lessen the dangers facing young people today as it did back then. “For me, there’s just a lack of understanding of what ‘love’ really is today. I always tell people that ‘love is giving of myself for the good of someone else,’” he says. “I’m seeing less and less and less of that and the outcome is more and more need. People are more and more rebellious and feeling like they can deal with that void in their lives with other things like drugs, alcohol, violence, whatever it might be.”

Volunteers hand out donations from the community center’s food pantry and cook up a Sunday afternoon meal for local families.

L.O.V.E.’s approach has proven more effective than traditional models of education and services, Holt believes, because it’s based on Christ’s principles, caring relationships, nontraditional learning experiences and community service. It is a phiosophy that has stood the test of time and the cynicism that he often encounters at speaking engagements and in fundraising.

Through it all, L.O.V.E.’s approach has been too successful to ignore. Over the years, the Little Rock School District approached the organziation to develop a variety of in-school, after-school, alternative school and juvenile detention re-entry programs. In 2009, L.O.V.E. secured funding from the U.S. Department of Justice to foster a collaborative network coordinating resources, mentoring and prevention, intervention and re-entry support for youth in central Arkansas. That initiative resulted in iBelieve, a network of more than 40 community organizations including Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Arkansas (BGCCA), Centers for Youth & Families, Goodwill, churches, schools, business leaders and community members. iBelieve has since been designated by the Justice Department as a “best practice” among DOJ programs. The following year, BGCCA, Center for Youth & Families and L.O.V.E. landed additional federal funding to coordinate and direct resources, mental health services, mentoring, prevention, intervention, case management, adult services and community outreach through a local BGCCA club.

Additional ministries began to unfold with the 2005 founding of the 22,000-square-foot Healing Waters Outreach Center in Saline County. In 2009, a food distrbution program was established, followed by Connecting Streams Café in 2011. The café serves multiple meals every week, including to the more than 1,400 area families who visit each Sunday to take advantage of the onsite food pantry. The meals they receive in the café while awaiting their box of food promotes community and reinforces each person’s dignity, Holt notes.

Holt credits the work of volunteers and the saving love of Christ for the success of the ministries he’s founded. His passion for the work yet to be done hasn’t lost any of its evangelical zeal and he isn’t content to let L.O.V.E. rest on its laurels. He’s got ambitious plans for adding tutoring, workforce and computer skills training to an already robust slate that includes recovery groups, worship, clothing relief, bible study, and spiritual and emotional support. It’s a complicated endeavor, based on the simplest of creeds: “Teaching people how to love themselves and love others,” Holt says.