experiences

So I was involved last school yr in this sleep in for the homeless...i wasnt able to go this yr cause i wad home for fall break but helping them has made me realize some things and I just wanted to talk about my experiences with this:

Did you know that the average age of a homeless person is 9 years old? I know I didn't until I found this out at one Service Learning Club meeting here at LRC. Learning that made me want to be even more involved with CHS, and continue to do Operation-Save-a-Life.

On Friday, October 17th starting at 6:30 p.m.-Saturday, Oct 18th at 6:30 a.m. There was a sleep-in for the homeless at the City Council Building in Pittsburgh. It's an advocacy and awareness raising event sponsored by Community Human Services (CHS) which hopes and supports for people experiencing homelessness in Pittsburgh. Each year, they hold a "Sleep-In for the Homeless," to offer solutions for those who so desperately need our assistance. We slept in sleeping bags that night on the Portico of the City Council Building..So I just wanted to share my experiences and would encourage all of you to check out the website which includes photos there are pictures of other students with us from La Roche, as well as other people at the event, blogs-mine of which will be on here as my reflection of the event,and statistics about homelessness in Pittsburgh. It was a $25 dollar donation-registration fee.

So here's my reflection to the Sleep-In:
There's just a couple things I wanted to say about the Sleep-In.
It's funny because I remember not being able to fall asleep until 1:30-2:00 in the morning, as of a lot of people I'm sure. I don't know if had to do with how cold it was, all the noise, or how aware and awake I was of everything at that point of time. I believe it was a combination of both. Being out there really heightens you sense of awareness, at least it did for me anyway because you just don't know what could happen. I took out my journal, I wanted to write down how I felt at that moment both physically, and mentally;What did I notice about my surroundings, things like that. For one thing, I'm not used to being in big cities where the HUGE buildings make you feel a little more insignificant haha, and then like, just being out there in that cold makes you mentally realize what the homeless have to go through every night and day. When I had that journal out, I had a reallly hard time writing anything because of how surreal it was, I had a few things but it didn't help. I think now having done the Sleep-In, well, if someone asks me what it was like? I'd say, well..it was realllly cold, but you would have just had to be there because I don't think there are the right words to describe it.Thanks again for holding this sleep-in. People really do need to realize how important homelessness is. It's an issue that reflects the bigger picture of how our country is doing financially, morally, and socially. It is an important need to address, not just for how we can help, but also for what it teaches us about ourselves.

Here's the Link to the website that has all the info, and blogs about the Sleep-In. Also a link to the sponsors of the event, Community Human Services, to find out more about them. I'd love to hear some comments about it from everyone!!
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Thanks

I just want to point out that "homeless" and "living on the street" are not synonymous terms. I gather that you spent a night sleeping rough/on the street - but that's only one kind of homelessness. For example, in my country, if a woman and her children stop paying rent on privately rented accomodation where they live and shortly after move in with family members, they can be officially classed as "homeless" (this is a common ploy used by parents, especially single mothers, to get given subsidised accomodation of a higher standard than they could afford).

The average age of a homeless person by that standard - namely someone who does not reside in a permanent home whether it be owner-occupied or rented - is considerably lower than the average age of a person sleeping on the streets and/or in hostel accomodation. I'm not sure what definition of homeless your group was working with, but if the wider variation, then the majority of those "homeless" 9 year olds are living with their families in houses with full facilities.

Homelessness is a very serious situation for a whole lot of reasons but I myself was quite shocked to discover how wide some definitions are, and I think it's important to keep that in mind.

Understand...just wanted to put my experience out there because some people just don't know much about it.