Fridley High School Key Club Homeless Sleepout on Friday

This evening the football field at 6000 W. Moore Lake Dr., will be transformed into a “box city” to raise money for the homeless.

Mary “Crzy Mry” Bowen, local Kiwanis member and a longtime advisor for the Fridley Key Club, expects more than 100 Fridley High School students Friday evening at the annual Homeless Sleepout.

“Last year’s sleepout raised $1,555 for local food shelves and homeless shelters, such as (local food shelf) ,” said Bowen. “We expect to raise more this year.”

Each student participating pays $10 minimum for the "privilege" of spending the evening in one of 175 boxes donated by International Paper in Arden Hills.

The kids start arriving before the gate opens at 10 p.m. with everything needed to spend an evening in the cold. Duct tape and markers are staples, as groups vie to construct the largest, most outlandish living quarters for the evening, with names such as the Fridley Hilton.

Music abounds with the kids’ iPod docks blasting everything from hip hop to rock. “Twenty years ago or so when we began this service project, they brought huge boom boxes”, Bowen said. “There have been a lot of changes over the years. Twenty years ago cell phones weren’t around. Now just about every student has."

One thing that hasn’t changed, according to Bowen, is that the kids are continually eating. Pizza deliveries are frequent until the gates close and the field lights are turned off at midnight.

Fridley’s Key Club participated in 64 projects last year, with a total of 11,241 service hours, raising money through activities such as the popular Sleepout, the Teeter Totter Marathon over Thanksgiving weekend, and Dodge for Darfur.

They spent 1,217 hours filling Operation Christmas Child boxes; 2,650 hours knitting bandages for Leprosy patients; and 810 hours on Adopt a Soldier, raising almost $13,000 through the year.

For anyone interested in cheering on the builders, the gates will be open from 10 p.m. until midnight.

At that time, the students are locked in, with advisors and parent chaperones walking the track and helping to keep some semblance of peace throughout the night until the 6:30 a.m. wakeup call on Saturday morning.

By 7:30 a.m. the box “homes” will have been broken down and ready for recycling, trash picked up and the tired students will head home, humbled by their experience, with a sense of satisfaction that they may have made a difference in the life of someone less fortunate than them.

Donations will be accepted at the event itself, or send a donation to the Fridley High School Key Club, c/o Bruce Metzer or Eugenie Burns, at Fridley High School, 6000 W. Moore Lake Dr., Fridley, MN 55432. Designate it to “Homeless Sleepout.”