Youth to participate in Sleep Out
Editor’s note: This event has been cancelled by the organizers.
On the night of Saturday, Oct. 17, St. Paul high school youth will be sleeping outside.
They will build makeshift shelters and gather with others at Brady Street Stadium for Sleep Out, an event to support the Humility of Mary Shelter in Davenport, beginning at 6 p.m.
“Our hope is that this will offer an understanding of hunger and homelessness in the Quad Cities,” said Vicki Felger, a St. Paul member who volunteers with Humility of Mary.
Humility of Mary is one of the shelters that serves the approximately 400 people who are homeless on any given night in the Quad Cities. They provide shelter and programming, including initiatives for military veterans, for dozens of people every single night of the year.
The shelter is part of the Congregation of the Humility of Mary, a religious order that responded to the urgent need to reopen the local emergency homeless shelter when it closed in 2008. It offers:
Overnight emergency shelter: Beds are available for adults who face an urgent housing need. The overnight facility is open from 6 p.m. until 8 a.m. daily.
Day shelter: The day shelter is open from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. daily. This program provides overnight shelter participants and members of the community with a safe, climate-controlled, and monitored environment.
Outreach team: The team extends a regular presence to assist those living on the streets, by the river, in vehicles or in abandoned buildings in the community. They provide survival items and information about housing, healthcare, and meal sites.
The shelter is funded by grants, including support from federal and state agencies. The gap between grant funding and the amount of money it takes to run the shelter is approximately $300,000 a year, said Sandi Burrichter, development director for Humility of Mary. St. Paul is contributing $10,000 to the operation of the shelter in 2015.
“We’re full every day,” Sandi said.
For Sleep Out, St. Paul youth will build or bring simple items to provide them shelter for the night – cardboard, tarps, sleeping bags. A variety of activities and entertainment will be available through the night, as will information from shelter leaders about the realities of homelessness in the area.
A poverty simulation will show some of the challenges that people who live in poverty face.
Billie Greenwood
This article is great, and we’ve posted a link to it on the SleepOut Event Page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1122554117771905/
We look forward to seeing you at SleepOut 2015! Thank you so much for your support!