Students raise money and awareness for the homeless
About 18 Juneau-Douglas High School students got a taste of homelessness Saturday night as they slept outside in 25- to 30-degree temperatures to raise funds for the Glory Hole, the downtown homeless shelter and dining hall.
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At the start of the Homeless Awareness Demonstration, at about 7 p.m., students crouched on pavement in the high school's faculty parking lot and painted signs to display to passing motorists on Egan Drive.
"1.2 million children homeless," "3.5 million homeless in the U.S.," "300 homeless in Juneau alone," some of the cardboard signs read.
The students are members of the school's Interact Club, which is a program for Rotary members ages 14 to 18 and is sponsored by the three local Rotary clubs. Interact members do a lot of service in the community, but it's usually more along the lines of cooking at the Glory Hole or singing at the Pioneers' Home or raising funds for students at a Rotary boarding school in Mexico.
Adult chaperone Nico Bus, who is the community service director with Rotary, said Interact is "supposed to be teaching them leadership, so the kids have to come up with their own (service) program."
Alida Bus, a senior and president of the roughly 40-member club, said she got the idea for the sleepout from a Virginia Interact student she met at a Rotary conference in Wisconsin this summer.
"I thought that would be appropriate to do in Juneau because homelessness is a problem here, and since it's cold here in the winter," Bus said.
Students solicited pledges. Bus said they hoped to raise between $2,000 and $3,000 for the Glory Hole.
"It's a novel way to raise funds. It's awfully cold out," said Glory Hole Executive Director Jetta Whittaker.
"They'll get a taste of what it's like to be camping. I admire them just for pulling it off and experiencing what a lot of our patrons experience daily," she said.
Students slept in 11 large cardboard boxes of the kind that appliances and furniture come in. They brought sleeping pads and sleeping bags, and wore many layers of clothes. They brought hot chocolate but not food. And no electronic entertainment.
The students said they realized their night out wasn't the same as truly being homeless, but they didn't want to bring luxuries either.
"It's one thing for us to do this one night," Alida Bus said. "What we're dealing with pales with what homeless people have to do for extended periods of time. We didn't feel it was appropriate for us to have luxuries."
Erin Kelly, a senior, said she's tried to help the homeless in the past by helping to make Thanksgiving dinner boxes for the needy.
Of the sleepout she said, "I just think it's one of the many ways we can help out, and it's the holidays" - a time when nonprofit organizations especially need help.
"I think it helps us reflect on how lucky we are," Kelly said. "For us, we got to go home and eat a home-cooked meal and then come to this."
Whittaker, of the Glory Hole, said some local teenagers and young adults who are independent can't support themselves and end up camping out or couch-surfing at friends' houses.
"A lot of young adults are here (at the Glory Hole) because they can't make enough money to make it on their own," she said.
Dixie Weiss, the faculty adviser for the Interact Club and one of the sleepout's chaperones, said the club fills the needs of overachievers.
"They're all astounding students. They're doing well in school, and they're doing more," she said.
Whittaker said the community has been wonderful to the Glory Hole this month as it sought to fill a financial gap and reopen its doors during the day. But she noted that other social service organizations also need support.
• Eric Fry can be reached at efry@juneauempire.com.