It is a drizzly, cold, rainy day in Burlington and temperatures overnight are expected to be in the 30’s. Despite the dampness and chill, some people plan to voluntarily sleep outside tonight. Hundreds are participating in a Spectrum Youth Services’ Sleep Out to raise awareness about and raise funds to help homeless youth.
“No tents. We provide like a canopy because it is going to rain. We give people a cardboard box and a little black tarp underneath them. They can bring a sleeping bag. But for one night they’ll feel the pinch.”
This is the 12th year Spectrum Youth Services Executive Director Mark Redmond will be among those sleeping outside in downtown Burlington. The late-winter/early spring Sleep Out is an effort to show solidarity for homeless youth and to raise money for support services. Redmond says 410 people have registered with 300 part of student teams who will spend the night outside regardless of the weather.
“It starts out like a pep rally. We give awards for the most money raised and everybody hoots. When you actually go out there and there’s snow on the ground and it’s cold and it’s raining and you can’t sleep and there’s ambulances going by, at about 2 or 3 a.m. it hits you. Like wow, this is no longer fun. And if I was a teenager and I had to get up in the morning and go to school or go to work this would be really a miserable way to live. So it really changes people’s consciousness about what it’s like to be homeless. It does raise a lot of money, but it really changes the way people think about homelessness and really I think helps them to feel more compassion than they might have before.”
Last year Spectrum helped 1,280 young people deal with problems such as homeless. Redmond says it’s hard to know how many homeless youth there are in a rural state like Vermont, but he knows their services for those between 18 to 22 are needed year round.
“It’s sad to see an 18-year-old who’s lived in 12 different foster homes. And then they hit 18 and so we’re really trying to help give them some direction from that point. Then, you have children who have some kind of mental health difficulty. Suddenly they hit 18 and you think well the adult mental health system will now pick them up. Well, no they don’t. So we have a lot of young people with serious mental health difficulties who end up on the streets. We provide a decent place to live. We have staff who will help kids get back into school, find a job. We even have somebody teaching them how to drive a car. That’s our mission to help that group of young people.”
The Burlington Sleep Out begins at 9:30 tonight at the Unitarian Universalist Church. Similar events will occur this and next weekend in South Burlington, Williston, Essex and Winooski. Redmond says the newest community to participate is St. Albans, where Spectrum recently opened a drop-in center.
“You know someone said ‘how many kids do you think you’ll see in St. Albans?’ I was like I don’t know. 80? We’re up to 370 young people in St. Albans who come to that drop-in center. And you know what else we see? Younger. We’re seeing kids 14, 15 and 16 in addition to the 18 and 19-year-olds. In every major community there’s a need. There are young people, 16, 17, 18-years-old who need help getting on track, getting jobs, getting back into school, finding housing. So that’s who we want to help.”
The goal of this year’s Sleep Out is to raise $400,000 for Spectrum’s programs and services.
