The following has been taken from the website to provide you with more information:
Sleep Out 120 is a 5 day, 120-hour-long campaign during which participants commit to living “homeless” on the streets of St. John’s, Newfoundland, to raise awareness on the issue of youth housing and homelessness. The campaign aims to raise funds for its recipient charity(s) that supports youth in the St. John’s metro area. By encouraging our city’s young people to sacrifice their comforts and stand up for those less fortunate than themselves, this campaign supports a vision of social responsibility through youth supporting youth.
History:
Sleep Out 120 was created by a group of Child and Youth Care students at Eastern college. It all started with conversation amongst students who wanted to create change within the St. John’s area surrounding the youth housing and homelessness issues. Initially the initiative was to follow the national campaign called Five Days for the homeless, (www.5days.ca). As a group, the national start date didn’t work for the student, so as a group they decided to ask Five Days for the Homeless if they could guide our rules and guidelines by their campaign. Five Days gave us permission and we decided to create our own campaign, Sleep Out 120.
We began working on the campaign in January 2010 and built our committee at the beginning of February. Ther start date of the
campaign was April 5, 2010. The 2010 Sleep Out 120 campaign raised awareness
through major media outlets and raised over $9500. We showed that we had a
group of young people who were not only interested but extremely passionate to
create change in St. John’s concerning youth housing and homeless.
The committee was assembled in September 2010, as the months went on, new members joined the committee. The committee consisted of participants and employees from the Housing and homelessness Network, Choices For Youth and For The Love Of Learning. We had a participant team of 20; all of the participants have educational and work backgrounds in either Social Work or Child and Youth Care. The Friendship centre and The Murphy centre provided a talking circle at their youth centre which consisted of the participant team, employees and the youth. At both of these circles, we had the opportunity to meet youth who are at risk, to hear their voices on the issue of homelessness and to give us the understanding for the need for the Sleep Out 120 campaign and other campaigns that help to create change on homelessness because it will not change overnight.
The media helped to cover the three aspects of our key messaging which were the 5 barriers that youth face (LGBT, Aboriginal, substance abuse & addiction, sexual exploitation and aging out of care), the lack of affordable and supportive housing and when affordable, the housing units tend to be inadequate..
Sleep Out 120 was created by a group of Child and Youth Care students at Eastern college. It all started with conversation amongst students who wanted to create change within the St. John’s area surrounding the youth housing and homelessness issues. Initially the initiative was to follow the national campaign called Five Days for the homeless, (www.5days.ca). As a group, the national start date didn’t work for the student, so as a group they decided to ask Five Days for the Homeless if they could guide our rules and guidelines by their campaign. Five Days gave us permission and we decided to create our own campaign, Sleep Out 120.
We began working on the campaign in January 2010 and built our committee at the beginning of February. Ther start date of the
campaign was April 5, 2010. The 2010 Sleep Out 120 campaign raised awareness
through major media outlets and raised over $9500. We showed that we had a
group of young people who were not only interested but extremely passionate to
create change in St. John’s concerning youth housing and homeless.The committee was assembled in September 2010, as the months went on, new members joined the committee. The committee consisted of participants and employees from the Housing and homelessness Network, Choices For Youth and For The Love Of Learning. We had a participant team of 20; all of the participants have educational and work backgrounds in either Social Work or Child and Youth Care. The Friendship centre and The Murphy centre provided a talking circle at their youth centre which consisted of the participant team, employees and the youth. At both of these circles, we had the opportunity to meet youth who are at risk, to hear their voices on the issue of homelessness and to give us the understanding for the need for the Sleep Out 120 campaign and other campaigns that help to create change on homelessness because it will not change overnight.
The media helped to cover the three aspects of our key messaging which were the 5 barriers that youth face (LGBT, Aboriginal, substance abuse & addiction, sexual exploitation and aging out of care), the lack of affordable and supportive housing and when affordable, the housing units tend to be inadequate..
The 2011 Sleep Out 120 campaign team
had tremendous passion and worked productively together. The involvement from
the community and community services was much appreciated. The awareness of
youth homelessness was presented well by the main stream media outlets and we
raised over $15 000.
Please check out the website if you would like to Donate, volunteer, or learn more info about getting involved with this great cause.
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