Shanty Town- Habitat for Humanities


April 1999:
My friend Ting and I found out about Shanty Town early into the project and were anxious to help with it. I was especially interested because of my work with ECHO and the fact that my sister, cousin, and grandparents were all orphans. Sponsored by Habitat for Humanities, this project brought forth awareness for the homeless by having a group of students live in cardboard boxes for 24 hours. Twenty-four very cold, hard, hungry hours, I might add. It was a lot of fun getting to know the Habitat members, and one even brought his guitar. Quite a few people stopped by to donate money. We raised a few hundred, and one very sweet man even bought us all coffee and donuts the next morning. I had never experienced anything like the insane cold and discomfort I felt while trying to sleep outside, in a cardboard box, though I’d froze camping a number of times. I still don’t know how anyone could do it every day and night and my empathy towards the homeless rose far above the scale that night, though my faith in mankind for the donations and coffee was much restored. In the future, I hope to be involved in such issues even more prominently, now that I have a very small taste of what the people truly go through.

NOTE: Photo from the Collegiate Times