Teens taste homelessness

By Emma Sun
A GROUP of 75 young people has raised more than $4800 for the homeless in Australia after sleeping away from home over the weekend.
The group, all aged between 13 and 25, stayed at the Mill Valley Ranch in Tynong North overnight as part of the Winter Sleepout to raise money for Mission Australia.
When 23-year-old Jordy Bowen, a volunteer youth worker at the Mill Valley Ranch, organised the event, he never dreamed that so many people would take part.
“I’ve been working with the people in the community for years, and I was keen to put a group of young people together to raise awareness for homelessness,” Jordy said.
“I thought we’d have about 20 people and raise like $1000 so to have 75 people sign up and raise more than $4800, it’s really overwhelming.”
All of their funds were collected for the sleepout, with many children going to schools and churches to ask for donations, which Jordy was very proud of.
“It’s kind of the way it works – people sponsor you to sleep the night out to see what it’s like to be homeless for a night,” he said.
“People sponsored the team to do that and it’s a pretty good response for just the one night.”
The statistics of young homeless people in Australia is quite alarming, which is also why Jordy picked up the cause.
“There are 44,000 people under 25 who are homeless in Australia,” he said.
“I think that’s a massive figure and I think there is more that can be done about it – getting the word out is most important, so we’ll do our best to do that.”