Hide and seek

Avondale students learn about homelessness the hard way

Sonja Larsen
Editorial assistant, Connections
Avondale College of Higher Education
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia

It is confronting: on any given night, 105,000 people in Australia are homeless, with nearly half of these under the age of 25. These statistics motivated two Avondale College of Higher Education students to raise awareness of the issue by spending a night outside covered only by cardboard boxes.

Ketannah Hope, president of student mission club COSMOS, and Benjamin Keri, a Bachelor of Arts student, slept in their boxes on a piece of black plastic film under the gum trees behind Bethel Hall, April 6, the date of Youth Homelessness Matters Day.

Ketannah woke with a chill and felt sore and stiff. “I began to understand why when people who are homeless walk, it looks like each step hurts.” Ben missed his morning shower. “I looked scruffy, I felt scruffy and I began acting scruffy—I lost all etiquette from 21 years of practice in one meal,” he says. “I enjoy a week of camping dirty, but the dirtiness of being homeless is different. Not being able to provide for your physical needs is degrading.”

While they recognise the experience as not accurately portraying homelessness—many people “couch surf”—and describe it as “artificial”—Ketannah accepted an offer of a thin sleeping bag—both students say the loss of not only a sense of belonging but also a sense of dignity and identity has inspired them to find other ways to support people who are homeless.

“Imagine the change if we truly loved our neighbours,” says Ketannah. “It meant so much when someone smiled at me, talked to me, asked questions of me and shared their food with me.”

Youth Homelessness Matters Day is an initiative of Yfoundations and the National Youth Coalition for Housing. The theme of the day this year: the hidden nature of youth homelessness. To learn more about the issue, visit www.youthhomelessnessmatters.net.