Student outside at Brock as part of 5 Days Campaign in March 2008 ( Photo: Block Press )
For five days from March 16 to March 20, five business students at Brock University will get to experience what it is like to be homeless.
The students from the Business Students’ Association (BSA) at Brock will be participating in the 5 Days Campaign, a charity campaign for the homeless.
The 5 Days campaign is nationwide, involving universities from all over the country. Students from the School of Business at the University of Alberta founded the campaign in 2005 after they identified homelessness as a growing issue in their community.
The mission of the campaign is to raise awareness about homelessness, provide monetary donations for local charities around the country, and to help change the negative image of businesses as not caring about their community.
Over the past few years, the campaign has proved to be tremendously successful. Universities all over the country have raised $121,000 collectively in 2008, surpassing their original goal of $87,000.
“I think the 5 days Campaign is an excellent campaign, it has grown phenomenally over the past couple of years and it has blossomed into a great awareness-oriented campaign,” said Courtney Craig, the director of administration at Brock.
The goal for Brock business students is to raise $5,000 for the Community Care of St. Catharine’s and Thorold Housing Help Centre. The centre is responsible for helping the working poor, the homeless, those facing eviction and developmentally challenged people who are being deinstitutionalized.
The centre provides emergency, temporary or permanent housing. Craig said the centre is “ a very active group within the community.”
“We want to establish a rapport with them so that we continue to have good community relations.”
There are specific rules that students participating in the campaign have to follow. The students have to remain on campus for the five days of the campaign, and sleep outside with only a sleeping bag and a pillow.
The students are prohibited to have any income, food or drinks. All monetary and non-perishable food donations will be going to their charity. The sleeping bag and the pillow, however, can be exchanged for an emergency meal.
The participants will have no access to showers, and washrooms can only be accessed when campus buildings are open.
The students have to attend all their classes and complete all required work, but are discouraged from using cellphones or social websites such as Facebook. Finally, the students are to write about their experiences on an online blog.
Craig hopes that by participating in the campaign, BSA can make students more aware of life outside the classroom. For Craig, the campaign is about “realizing that it can happen to all of us.”