On a cool morning in Denver, a 71-year-old Buddhist nun pedals their three-wheeled electric tricycle beneath highway overpasses and along cracked bike paths, slowing as they approach tents tucked against concrete embankments or someone sleeping under a bridge.
The small trailer fastened to the bike carries bottled water, bagged lunch, socks, gloves, harm-reduction supplies, tents and hand warmers. Kelsang Virya, a homelessness activist and mother who founded Mutual Aid Monday or MAM, which now feeds more than 400 vulnerable and unhoused people a week, scans the grittiest parts of the city for familiar faces. Virya, who uses they/them pronouns, has become a familiar presence to many people living on Denver’s streets over the past five years.
“I think I know most people here,” Virya said after handing out supplies at a homeless encampment on the outskirts of Lakewood, where about 30 people gathered in tents and winter jackets approached them for water and food, saying “ma’am” and thanking them profusely.
Just before they arrived at the camp, the nun had stopped under a bridge to check on a man who appeared to have passed out, likely after using fentanyl, an extremely powerful opioid that has become Colorado’s leading cause of drug-related deaths in the past five years.
“He wouldn’t show me his face,” Virya said. “When I saw him under the bridge, it’s like whatever pops into my head is the mantra that’s needed.”
As Virya engages in what they call “street outreach,” the part of Mutual Aid Monday they feel most drawn to, they keep a rotation of Tibetan Buddhist mantras running quietly in their mind.
Emerging from the dark shade of an overpass, Virya will often whisper their primary mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum. Associated with the Buddha Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, the mantra is often understood as expressing the union of compassion and wisdom and is believed to relieve suffering. They turn to it instinctively whenever they encounter someone in distress.
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Virya came to Buddhism after being raised in a Lutheran household in Wisconsin, where they attended church as a child and later taught Sunday school. As an adult, while raising children and working in hospice care, they began reading Thich Nhat Hanh and Pema Chödrön before eventually finding their way to Tibetan Buddhism.
“What really drew me to Buddhism was the compassion,” they said. They were ordained more than 15 years ago and follow a tradition in which daily vows, prayers and study shape monastic life. “I retake my vows every day,” they said. “I haven’t missed in 15 and a half years.”
They also use the Tara mantra — Om Tara Tuttare Ture Soha — which they consider a prayer of protection. After checking that the man under the bridge did not need Narcan, they murmured the Tara mantra under their breath, saying it was the one that surfaced first because Tara is “the rescue Buddha,” the figure they call on when someone seems to need help.
“I would be so depressed,” Virya said. “I could not do this work. I have to have my faith that grounds me every day and is a refuge.”
This work began for Virya in 2019, when they and their granddaughter started taking bagged lunches to large encampments across Denver. They had moved to the city 12 years earlier to be closer to their son; three years before that move, they had been ordained and living at a monastery in New Mexico, but the lunches became their first act of direct outreach with people living outside.
In 2020, they joined the protests in Denver following the killing of George Floyd. After witnessing what they described as blatant aggression from police, Virya began showing up at homeless encampment sweeps several times a week to protest, as police were often reportedly poking holes in people’s tents, damaging personal property and handing out tickets.
“I started to get really motivated to do something, so I started to go to sweeps,” Virya said. “Until one day, an unhoused person said, don’t do that. She said that the police come down a lot harder on us when you’re gone.”
Denver has long enforced an unauthorized camping ordinance, commonly known as the urban camping ban, which prohibits sleeping in public spaces and has shaped how homelessness is managed in the city for more than a decade. The policy has made encampment sweeps a regular feature of life for people living on the streets, often forcing them to move with little notice and limited access to shelter. Very quickly, Virya changed their tune.
The next day, with a small red wagon, they showed up with fresh coffee and donuts. “Just be there for them and listen to them,” they said.
As they spent more time at sweeps, Virya began to see another gap. Unhoused people were losing not only their belongings, but also any opportunity to tell city leaders what was happening to them. So Virya and a small group of activists they had met at the sweeps brought their idea to the steps of the City and County Building, where City Council met on Monday nights. Monday nights at City Hall, when public comment is held, have historically drawn unhoused residents and advocates seeking to be heard.
“We decided that maybe we’d have a place where they could come and get food and gear, and the other half was to try to encourage folks to go into City Council,” Virya said. “That’s why it’s on Monday… so they could let them know what’s going on on the streets.”
The idea was simple: offer food, gear and a safe place to gather so people could step out of the encampments, get what they needed and, if they chose, go inside and speak during public comment.
“Virya cooked up a lot of food and was in their kitchen on Sunday, all day, preparing for Monday,” said Jess Wiederholt, a Denver activist, mother of seven, practicing Presbyterian and one of the founding members of MAM. “And then the rest of us all brought something, you know. So I, like, I would, I was, I was the pasta person.”
Early on, Kelsang cooked with whatever she could source from local food banks, mostly oatmeal and fish casserole, before the organization grew into what Mutual Aid Monday is today. The organization now relies largely on donations through platforms such as Patreon, and Kelsang recently received a $2,000 transportation grant from the city that paid for her electric tricycle.
What began with about 50 people and a handful of volunteers serving food has expanded into a weekly scene outside City Hall that unfolds into a temporary village, where up to 50 volunteers unload tents, sleeping bags and hygiene kits, lay out harm-reduction supplies on folding tables and even set up a barber’s chair.
“Haircuts come almost every week,” Virya said. “That it just gives people so much self esteem, you know, to get their hair done.”
Over time, Virya became known not just for feeding large groups, but for what they did when temperatures dropped and the city emptied out. During the coldest nights, they would drive their white van across Denver, circling encampments with blankets, heaters and food, calling out for anyone who might need a ride to a hotel room where they could safely spend the night. Many unhoused Denverites still recall those late-night searches as the difference between danger and survival.
“During cold nights, for 24 hours straight, Virya would be going to every nook and cranny in Denver to find people,” said Raymond, who has been unhoused in Denver for six years. “When it was life and death, she was there.”
In 2025, about 10,774 people in the Denver metro area were experiencing homelessness, including those staying in shelters and transitional housing. Virya says she believes there to be approximately 2,000 people on the streets any given night.
Jerry Burton, a Marine veteran and former unhoused activist who now works with the Housekeys Action Network, has been involved with Mutual Aid Monday since its earliest days. Now, he moves through the weekly gathering passing out fliers about low-income housing resources.
“This was her dream that she is doing,” Burton said of Virya. “MAM started out of protest. Now, we are trying to help people here, the unhoused neighbors, to become a better member of society by providing the necessity that I think that every man, woman and child should have, and that’s a place of their own.”
On a chilly Monday evening in late November, Wiederholt and Virya stood near a clothing distribution station staffed by several volunteers who, Virya noted, probably didn’t know them. The two reflected on how the organization has grown, and what that growth says about the city they have devoted so much of their lives to.
“Something has to drive you to do this work,” Wiederholt said. “And for Virya and me, that was our faith. No matter what that faith is, we believe in the dignity of human beings. That’s a big part of who we are and what we believe. And so we were out here because of that.”
As MAM expanded, so did the demands on Virya’s time. In the past year, they have stepped away from its daily operations, hoping to return to the rhythm of monastic life that first grounded their work.
“I felt like my spiritual practice was suffering a little bit,” Virya said. “It wasn’t that my faith had dwindled or anything. I just wasn’t having enough time, and I felt like I was not the person I wanted to be.”
Each day, Virya recites their vows, prays, meditates and studies Buddhist texts. Still, they spend several days a week visiting encampments on their tricycle, offering supplies, conversation and whispering ancient mantras under their breath. They say that connecting one-on-one with people on the street can feel a bit like spreading the calming practice of meditation.
“They’re getting a little peace of mind, for at least a few minutes,” Virya said. “And maybe they will return to that, despite everything, again and again.”