Couple's Lakeland ministry evolves from cash giveaway videos to sustained support

LAKELAND — In the 47-second video, a pair of disembodied hands hold a spread of $20 bills toward a haggard-looking man with a thick, gray beard.

“How much do you need?” an unseen speaker asks.

The man, stopping along a sidewalk, chuckles and asks, “What’s goin’ on?”

“Jesus loves you, and I want to bless you,” a younger man replies.

“Twenty dollars’ll work,” the bearded man says softly. “That’ll get me through the day.”

“That’s all you need?”

“I’m so tempted to take it all,” the man adds, glancing down at display of bills, before adding, “No, please, spread it around.”

The video, posted on YouTube in December 2022, encapsulates the original concept of Worth and Purpose, a nonprofit formed by a Plant City couple and based in Lakeland. Travis Settineri recorded snippets of his exchanges with needy people, some of them homeless, as he doled out dollars.

The “street ministry” of Settineri and his wife, Amber Settineri, has since evolved into an approach that is equally generous but more personal and sustained. The Settineris have helped move people lacking housing off the streets, getting them into campers or motels and covering their costs.

The couple has formed lasting friendships with the likes of Lloyd Gainey, a 63-year-old man with serious medical issues who spent 31½ years with no fixed housing and now refers to Travis as his son and Amber as his niece.

“Our goal is to give away as much money as possible before we die,” said Travis Settineri, 38. “We’ve given away over six figures in the first year, but we want to give away a million or more a year.”

The couple recently opened a ministry headquarters in Lakeland, a set of vibrantly decorated rooms in a former retail space on West Main Street. Both Travis and Amber are mostly self-trained artists — hence the name of their online presence, Travis Doodles — and they contributed all the painting and adornments in the headquarters.

The space includes barber room, complete with a traditional chair, reflecting Travis’ previous career as a stylist. He still wields scissors and clippers for any visitors in need of a trim.

The space’s centerpiece is “Doodles’ Diner,” a replica of a 1950s-style diner: checkerboard floor, jukebox, red leather booths, laminate table and walls bearing vintage signs with such messages as “Hamburgers: Hot and Delicious!” The couple do not actually serve food, and the space is intended for meeting rather than eating.

One wall of the diner is painted as a chroma key, or “green screen,” a background for shooting video that allows Travis to insert other settings in the editing process. He also records podcasts while sitting with guests in the booth.

A hallway serves as an arcade, with three working machines at the ready. The back room is the lounge, a whimsically illustrated space in which wall drawings seem to blend with a table, chairs and other three-dimensional objects.

“Let’s Be Friends,” beckons a 1960s-style script on one wall.

“Since we both are artists, it makes us happy to have the environment feel cool, but really it's just to make people feel special," Amber said. "Like, I had a group full of girls and as soon as they walked in that cafe, they went, 'Ohhhh.' "

Saying goodbye to jet set

Travis Settineri, a New Jersey native, came to Florida in the early 2000s to attend St. Leo University in Pasco County and never returned north. Amber spent most of her youth in Plant City. The couple met at a Brandon church and married eight years ago.

Travis, who began barbering as a teenager, started creating YouTube videos promoting his artistic endeavors as a “side hustle” around 2010. His work gained the attention of a TV producer and an invitation to Hollywood to take part in a reality show for MTV based on creating art.

“I got a real good taste of the entertainment industry, and I realized pretty quickly that I didn't want anything to do with it,” he said.

Travis said he returned to Florida, stopped making videos and dropped off social media, where he had established a sizable following. He later received an offer to be a personal videographer for a “very wealthy entrepreneur” in Tampa.

“My job was to basically ride around in Lamborghinis and Rolls Royces all day, every day, and just film,” he said. “It sounds like a dream. Sounds like, ‘Man, that's awesome' — you know, private jets. But I was living this lifestyle through my boss, and I was miserable. I'm like, ‘This is just so pointless.’ Like, it was cool, maybe, for a day. But it felt very empty.”

Settineri, who had become a Christian at age 18, said he shared his frustrations with a friend. He pledged that if he ever became wealthy, he would give his money away to others in need. It then occurred to him that he could be doing more for others even without being ultra-rich.

“I felt like I was challenged when I was having that conversation,” he said. “I felt like it was in my spirit. I was like, ‘Well, if you're not doing it now, with the little you have, you're not going to do it when you have a lot.’ So that just, like, haunted me. I couldn't sleep at night.”

Settineri was receiving a six-figure salary and had accumulated considerable savings. He talked to Amber about quitting his job and devoting himself to giving away money, expecting that she would try to talk him out of the idea. To his surprise, she encouraged him to do just that.

“So she's crazy,” Travis said. “She's crazier than I am.”

The couple have no children, just a French bulldog named Peach, and said they only sleep in Plant City but spend almost all their time in Lakeland.

Donations flow from video

About a year and a half ago, Travis began venturing into downtown Lakeland and surrounding areas, carrying wads of $20 bills and wearing a small camera on his backpack strap. He recorded videos in which he approached strangers and offered them cash.

In his previous phase as a YouTuber, Settineri said he had focused on himself and his artistic creations. Returning to video, he took a different approach.

“So once I took myself out of the equation, and I started just trying to serve people and just really make an impact on this earth, before I leave, instead of trying to blow my artwork up, that's when things really started to click and that's when everything started making sense,” he said.

In that first flurry, Settineri doled out thousands of dollars a week in cash. He soon realized that it wasn’t exactly a sustainable operation.

“So we're about four months in, and nothing's really happening,” he said. “I'm not working, because I'm making videos every day. And I'm giving away thousands of dollars. So I'm like, ‘All right, this is not working out that great.’”

“But he was happier than he's ever been,” interjected Amber.

“Yeah, so we're about to lose everything, and I've never been happier in my life,” Travis said. “And then — boom! This one video just takes off, like 20 million views.”

In the video that changed everything, a woman pushes an empty wheelchair at the perimeter of Munn Park as Travis, unseen, asks, “You need something cold to drink?”

The woman, responding with desperation in her voice, says, “My husband has cancer. That takes all of our money and we just can’t do it. So now we’re out here, just trying to see if anybody has any change to help, just anything to drink.”

Travis tells the woman, “OK, I’m gonna come right back.”

A snippet shows a purchase from a convenience store, and then Travis is back at Munn Park, handing bottled water to the woman and her husband, who says he has “pretty much terminal” cancer.

The video ends with Travis saying, accompanied by text in all capitals, “I’m trying to help this couple get off the streets. Bob’s cancer is getting worse due to his living situation, and I need your help. Any amount you can give makes a difference.”

A flood of donations followed, and the video has now been viewed 29 million times. In subsequent videos, Settineri documented how he and Amber went well beyond offering cold drinks in their support for the couple, now among a group of people living in a hotel on Memorial Boulevard at the expense of the Worth and Purpose ministry.

Seeing a deeper need

That story illustrates the evolution of the Settineris’ approach toward helping others.

“It kind of started off where it was just like, ‘We just want to make your day better,’” Travis said. “But then as you meet people, you see the need is greater than just today. And then you try to do what you can. And then sometimes it escalates into (getting them) off the street. Other times, it's very broad. So there's one-off interactions, and there's life-changing, lifetime interactions.”

Worth and Purpose is registered with the IRS as a religious organization and filed nonprofit paperwork to Florida’s Division of Corporations earlier this year.

Travis Doodles has now accumulated more than 8 million followers on social media, including 3.8 million subscribers on YouTube, 2 million on Facebook and 1.8 million on TikTok. The growth has come organically, without any advertising.

“In my opinion, the 10 years that I took off, God completely made up for the lost time because to get over 8 million followers in a year and a half, you can't do that without supernatural intervention, because, like, that's not normal,” Travis said.

The Settineris said that they subsist on their social media earnings, directing all the donations they receive into the ministry.

Some might assume that with nearly 4 million YouTube followers, Travis is drawing garish payments from the platform. He explained that most of his videos are considered shorts, making them ineligible for the advertising inserts that can generate substantial revenue for content creators.

Settineri said he has also received payments from Facebook and through some brand deals.

Putting Lloyd in business

Other videos document the Settineris connection with Gainey, whom Travis fondly calls “Big Lloyd.” Travis first encountered Gainey last year, around the time of Hurricane Ian, and learned that he had been homeless for three decades and had a seizure disorder, which he said precluded him from using the city’s most prominent homeless shelters.

“He’s just one of those cases where I was like, ‘Man, how the heck is this guy on the street?’ — because he can't survive,” Settineri said. “And he's been homeless for, like, 30 years. And I'm like, ‘How do you do that?’”

Settineri said he first gave Gainey enough money for a motel and then offered him a free haircut and began checking with him weekly. Travis and Amber soon bought a camper for Gainey and arranged for him to live at Gospel Village, a community of formerly unhoused people run by a Christian nonprofit.

Gainey, who had collected some income cleaning bathrooms for a dance studio, emphasized that he would rather earn money than have it given to him. Travis and Amber provided cleaning supplies — along with T-shirts and a hat featuring a logo Travis designed — so that Gainey could start an operation detailing vehicles. To follow up, they gave Gainey equipment and a new batch of T-shirts and other gear to support a lawn-care business, Lloyd’s Landscaping.

In one of the longer videos on the Travis Doodles YouTube channel, another of the Settineris’ beneficiaries, a woman named Rhonda, who lost both lower legs to infections, coordinates with Gainey to provide a free yard makeover for a 92-year-old woman.

Worth and Purpose raised $27,000 to fully renovate Rhonda’s decades-old motor home, which Travis said was in “unlivable” condition when they met her.

On a recent morning, Gainey sat beside Travis in the booth of the replica diner, wearing a hat and T-shirt that read “SECURITY,” reflecting his part-time job at Gospel Village.

“He got sent by an angel,” Gainey said. “I mean, people say they care, but living on the street I learned, I can tell when a person lies and when they don’t. But Travis, his word was his word and that’s what went on.”

He added: “There’s one thing about Travis and Amber, when they say they’re going to do something it’s from the bottom of their heart. It’s not just about money; it’s about helping people. I just wish there was more people like them that was truthful.”

Travis Settineri has learned that a code of behavior generally prevails among the older members of the unhoused population, one forbidding violence against children, women and pastors. Now well established as a street pastor, he said that homeless alpha males have vowed to protect him against any possible threats.

Settineri is not naïve about the population he has chosen for his ministry, a group he said includes people prone to violence, especially among the younger men. He said he has developed a perceptiveness that helps him decide which people to help.

“There's a lot of drug addicts out here,” he said. “I'm not trying to put you up and then you have a place to go do drugs. I want somebody that's really wanting to change, and yes, they need love, they need Jesus, and yes, I will love them at a distance. But I can't fund your habit.”

The videos on the Travis Doodles channel represent a small fraction of what Settineri records. He said he could have 20 million followers if he posted the “raw, uncut” material, but he chooses instead to present “a highlight reel of feel-good stuff.”

Becoming ice cream man

Recognizing that some needs go beyond the current capacity of his nonprofit, Settineri said he wants Worth and Purpose to be a conduit to other organizations. He and Amber recently hosted a tour of their headquarters by about 40 employees from United Way of Central Florida, an umbrella nonprofit that funds dozens of partner agencies.

Travis has scaled back the simple cash handouts as Worth and Purpose focuses more on providing comprehensive help to those in need. But he continues his giveaways through a recently acquired ice cream truck, painted pink and blue with the motto “Treats for the Streets,” driving around town and dispensing frozen snacks as well as hot food.

Settineri said he has regulars who wait for the truck in the same place each day. Travis and Amber also use the vehicle to ferry people without transportation to medical appointments and job interviews.

“The ice cream truck has been the best icebreaker ever, because you just roll up on somebody, you roll down the window — I don't care if you're homeless or not, ‘Hey, you want some ice cream?’” he said. “They say, ‘How much?’ I say, ‘It’s free.’ And then just turns into, like, instant friendship. You give somebody free ice cream and then you become best friends.”

The Settineris invite their friends to visit the headquarters for haircuts, fellowship or just to hang out. One wall along the hallway serves as a designated graffiti board, labeled “Messages from your future self.” The blackboard abounds with short notes and signatures, some from supporters and others from current and former homeless people, including one known as Caveman.

Travis envisions some day having a larger organization with a full staff, but he doesn’t pretend to have longterm plans mapped out.

“It’s kind of wild because a lot of people ask me that, and I'm like, ‘Man, I'm living hour by hour,’” he said. “I really had no goal, as far as like long term, because it wasn't my goal to have a building. It wasn't my goal to have an ice cream truck. It’s just one of those things where you kind of just go day by day, whatever God leads you to do. And my goal is love God, love people, and then the rest just does itself.”

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Lakeland ministry goes from cash giveaway videos to sustained support