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Homeless for a Night: 'It's about helping each other and making a difference in the world'

Champlain students sleep in cardboard boxes overnight, raise awareness of homelessness

Arlie Obomsawin is a Grade 9 student at École secondaire catholique Champlain in Chelmsford.

On Oct. 4, she was also homeless for a night. She was one of 119 students from Champlain to sleep in cardboard boxes overnight as part of the school's ninth Homeless for a Night event. 

“I wanted to raise money for the homeless, and to see what it was like,” she said, as she set up her cardboard box in the parking lot of the Metro grocery store.

About 65 per cent of the student population got a small taste of what it's like to be homeless, said Carol Bradley-Whissell, a teacher at the school and event organizer.

“The objective is to raise awareness that homelessness is everyone's business, and that we all have to chip in and help out,” Bradley-Whissell said. “I want the students to appreciate a little more what they do have in their lives, and I want them to see — if only for one night — what a homeless person goes through. It gives them a good perspective.”

Students were allowed to have a sleeping bag and a pillow, but nothing else that would make them more comfortable inside their boxes, she said. If it rains, they get wet. Come the morning, many of them are cold, but they tough it out, and they come back.

“They're tired in the morning, but I always tell them a homeless person has to go on with his day as usual, and that's why we require them to go about their day as usual, and attend classes in the afternoon,” Bradley-Whissell said. 

After they wake up in the morning, the students are ushered off to church without having breakfast first. They don't get to eat their first meal until about 10:30 a.m., and then they have to spend the rest of the day at school. 

The event counts towards the students' required volunteer hours, and they must abide by the schedule in order for them to receive those hours.

“We stress to them, though, that it isn't about volunteer hours,” she said. “It's about helping each other and making a difference in the world.”

Bradley-Whissell said she was excited to see about half of the Grade 9 students at the school participating in the event.

“It gives me the courage and the confidence that we'll have a good turnout for the next four years, at least,” she said.


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Arron Pickard

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