Foursome to fundraise for homelessness
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- Published on Tuesday, April 28, 2015
By Sheila Runions
Banner Staff
Although Youth for Christ (YFC) is a national Christian charity, each office has freedom to plan their own programs and events. Such is the case with the second annual Sleep on the Street, or SOS Brandon. An event planned to raise money and awareness for YFC’s Uturn program, one of Uturn’s life skills coaches spoke with Rivers Banner to answer some questions about the 16-hour campaign.
“We are fairly entrepreneurial at Youth for Christ so we can start our own programs because what works at one YFC won’t necessarily work at another,” says Josiah Mikkelsen. “This is our home-grown effort at developing awareness for and to help people have an idea of what it is to feel like you have no where to go.”
Some cultures have homeless children of single-digit age, but in Canada that doesn’t happen. Mikkelsen says the typical age for homeless youth starts at 15 or 16 years; Uturn works with youth/young adults from that age up to 29 years. SOS Brandon has a goal of $10,000 and to educate people about what it truly means to be homeless.
“The definition of homelessness does not necessarily mean they do not have a place to sleep. Homelessness, by its definition used by government agencies, is without permanent housing. In western Manitoba, and the bulk of that is in Brandon, there are 400 to 500 people every day who qualify as homeless. Homelessness is such a complex, difficult-to-pin-down problem that there’s a lot of overlap between agencies such as Child and Family Services, Canadian Mental Health Association, Samaritan House and us. We share a lot of information and we often receive youth who have been referred to us because we have more permanent housing. Our program is 18 months, to two years ideally; CMHA homes are generally 21 days for example. Samaritan House runs Safe and Warm, a place where people can just drop in and sleep in the winter, but that does not function year-round, just winter. The rules for tenancy with all agencies are flexible simply because people have difficulties; they put in all the hard work of searching for housing but they don’t see results so you have to be case specific.”
SOS begins Friday evening, May 8 at 6 p.m. and it ends Saturday morning, May 9 at 10 a.m. Participants will be without food, money, shelter, phones or electronic devices of any kind.
“We will encourage people to spend a certain amount of time by themselves so they know what it feels like to know no one is looking for you, so they gain a sense of what-do-I-do-now/where-do-I-go. We want people to experience aimlessness and how do you fill your time. We want them to realize I don’t have anything to eat, nothing to drink and no money to buy something, so how do I handle that? I need to use the washroom, how do I handle that? These are all real challenges facing youth; there are lots of smaller challenges involved in homelessness than just not having a place to sleep. Whenever people are sleeping, we will ask them to pair up. There will be a few safe places pre-arrangeed for people to sleep, like a cargo trailer and decks to sleep on; depending on weather, some may chose to sleep in a park like last year.”
As a safety measure, Brandon Police will be informed of the fundraiser and participants will retain their ID. YFC hopes to have at least 30 volunteers register for the event so if you are interested in this SOS challenge, please call 204-727-1251 of visit Uturn Ministry Facebook page. Uturn has been providing shelter for the past 15 years and typically denies entry to 100 people per year because no beds are available. There are five YFC buildings that house 26 people, occupancy rate hovers at maximum.
“A waiting list is somewhat deceptive,” says Mikkelsen. “We always have someone applying but we don’t always have space for them right away. If they applied six months ago and then we have a room open up, they may have found something in that time.”
Josiah attends Rivers Baptist Church where he has promoted SOS; in response to his challenge, three other men from the congregation have agreed to join him: Stan Runions, Garth Ventnor and Wil Warkentin. All four men will gladly accept pledges for their efforts so if you want to support SOS but are not prepared to participate, you can help the cause by providing some cash for the Uturn program. Josiah, Stan and Garth all live in Rivers so can be found quite easily; Wil lives in Brandon.
