For most Dal students, the fact that it snowed a bit Monday night, or that rain was forecasted for Wednesday morning, is a mild inconvenience at most.
For six students sleeping under an orange tarp outside of the Rowe Building, it’s a more challenging proposition.
For the second year in a row, the Dalhousie Commerce Society is taking part in 5 Days for the Homeless — a national fundraising and awareness campaign focused on youth at risk. Starting this past Sunday, and continuing through until Friday at 5 p.m., students will be spending their entire week camped outside of the Rowe Building.
The students have to remain on campus for all five days of the campaign. While they still have to attend their classes, none are allowed to have an income for the week and everything they eat or drink has to be donated. They can’t shower and can only use publicly accessible washrooms. They do get a sleeping bag, and a tarp to keep away the elements, but otherwise the clothes on their backs are all they start with to get through the week.
Like last year’s efforts, all of the funds raised by the Dal students goes to Phoenix, a Halifax-based non-profit that offers services and support for at-risk and homeless youth. Of the twenty-six universities across Canada are taking part in the campaign, Dalhousie is the only one in Atlantic Canada.
Raising change and changing minds
“Reaching out and giving back to the community is so important to the Commerce Society,” says fourth-year student Breanne Beckett, the society’s community co-chair and also one of the six sleepers.
“We’re a values-based Faculty and we really want to give back to the community in any capacity we can. This initiative specifically speaks to youth homelessness, and we really took this one to heart. We want to help and have an impact on peers and people our age who are experiencing less fortunate circumstances.”
In addition to the six sleepers, who spend all of their non-class time outside, there are other students who will “guest sleepers” through the week, taking part for shorter periods of time. Then there are four students whose contributions to the campaign are in organizing and fundraising.
Katie Flanagan, a second-year Commerce student, took part in last year’s campaign and is sleeping outside once again this year.
“We’re taking monetary donations, but the biggest thing we want to focus on over the course of the week is just that awareness factor,” she says. “It’s about creating an awareness of youth homeless and also Phoenix Youth Programs and everything they do to give back to the community."
A community contribution
When Dal News spoke to the students on Tuesday afternoon, they’d been through a couple of cold nights but, so far, the weather had been reasonably cooperative. They weren’t looking forward to Wednesday’s rain forecast, though: staying dry is one of the week’s biggest challenges. On the food and drink front, fellow students and others in the Dal and Halifax community have been generous: following our interview, a couple of pizzas were delivered to the team outside.
In that sense, the students are well aware that their experience this week isn’t quite the same as the actual lived experience of homelessness. But the hope is that, through inspiring generosity, they encourage others — and themselves — to think different about the issue.
“We’re trying to impact a privileged space, and we can’t really compare what we’re doing to actually being in those shoes,” says Breanne. “But personally, I’m extremely humbled by this experience. I’ll never look at our community the same way again. We just want to fight this stigma.”
The students will be outside the Rowe Building, at the corner of University and Seymour, until this Friday, March 13, at 5 p.m., at which point there will be a ceremony to mark the end of the campaign. In the meantime, if you’d like to contribute to their campaign in any way — money, food, beverages or just good cheer — visit the students outside of the Rowe Building.
You can also donate funds online at 5days.ca/Dalhousie, as well as read video and blog updates from the students