By Isabela Gamez
The Primavera Foundation
For Mel Selway, giving back is a guiding principle shaped over decades.
“Our parents taught my sister and I to give to others regardless of their social status,” Selway said. “I’ve been fortunate in my life to have the opportunity to do that.”
That sense of gratitude and responsibility has shaped the way Selway and his wife, Jan Grey, approach community support in Tucson.
Their path led them to STAR Village, a collaboration connecting Primavera Foundation, Old Pueblo Community Services (OPCS), and the City of Tucson to expand services for individuals experiencing homelessness. STAR Village brings together outreach, shelter, and resource navigation in one coordinated space designed to reduce barriers and connect people more quickly to housing and support.
“We support homeless people throughout Tucson with food and beverage bags but we were trying to do something a little bit more permanent and we had heard about STAR Village, but that’s all we knew,” Selway said.
A visit to The Primavera Foundation helped change that. After connecting with staff, Selway and Grey were invited on a tour of the program’s full ecosystem.
Philanthropy Officer Pete Corrigan “offered to give us a tour, so he gave us a tour of the training facilities and to the daily outreach around the corner and to the men’s shelter,” he said. “After that, we decided to donate some clothing and other goods.”
It was during those conversations that a more specific need emerged.
Pete mentioned that it was getting hot and that Primavera was going to try to install misters at STAR Village, because it’s open air, Selway said.
In Tucson’s extreme summer heat, cooling interventions are very important in open-air community spaces. The need immediately resonated with Selway, who decided to support the project by funding the installation of a mister system at STAR Village.
He also recalled smaller, more immediate needs identified during his visit.
“On the tour, when we visited the resource center, your founder (co-founder Nancy Bissell) was working there, and she happened to have a list of supplies that were needed,” Selway said. “Two of the things happened to be nail clippers and lip balm, so I purchased 100 tubes of lip balm and about 12 nail clippers.”
These details, he said, reinforced why direct exposure to the work matters.
Selway said his impression of Primavera’s mission deepened as he learned more about its approach to homelessness response and reintegration.
“When we learned about Primavera and how you try to get people back into society, we felt it was a godsend,” he said. “One of the things that excited us about Primavera is that it’s a large operation and it has a good success rate.”
He also believes transparency and firsthand experience are key to inspiring more community giving.
“When we visited the men’s shelter, we were quite impressed that there are three different colored mops to be used in various areas of the facility and they require the residents to participate in maintaining (the space).”
“I think the more that people can see that your organization operates efficiently and has a good success rate, the better chance that people will want to donate their hard-earned money and give it to the organization because they think it’s going to be well used.”
As STAR Village continues to evolve through partnerships, contributions like Selway’s highlight the role individual donors play in strengthening infrastructure that often goes unseen—yet makes a tangible difference every day.
For Selway, it all comes back to a simple belief: giving is both responsibility and gratitude in action.
“I have this need to pay people back for the blessings that I’ve been given,” he said.