Schools
Viewfinder: High School Students Sleep Outside for the Homeless
White Plains High school students involved in the Midnight Run Club sleep outside in cardboard boxes to raise awareness and money for the homeless.
On a chilly Friday night after a long school week, the last thing you’d expect is for high school kids to want to spend a night sleeping at their school—not to mention outside in cardboard boxes.
However, at White Plains High School, the students involved in a school club called Midnight Run had been anticipating this night all year. For the Sleep-Out for the Homeless event, 25 students from different grades, along with several teachers and coordinators, slept outside in the school courtyard in cardboard boxes in order to raise awareness about what homeless people experience.
Students arrived at the school at around 7 p.m., with their sleeping bags and extra blankets nestled in their arms. They were given large cardboard boxes and supplies such as tape and box-cutters, and they were expected to build their own shelters for the night.
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The boxes, which ranged from about 5 X 5 feet to larger sizes, were either collected by the club’s members from dumpsters in White Plains, or were donated by Royal Green Appliances.
Although the rain held off for the night, an overcast sky and chilly temperatures in the low 40‘s were not ideal for sleeping outside. Besides some soup provided by Nonna’s Restaurant.
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Besides promoting awareness about homelessness, each student had to raise $50 in order to participate, which was donated to the Open Arms Men’s Shelter, located on Post Road in White Plains. Last year, students raised about $2,000.
“Midnight Run is the most well-attended and most popular club at school," Michael Roma, a social studies teacher and club coordinator, said.
Ricardo Vela, a teacher at White Plains High School and the main supervisor of the club, said the group meets every Friday during lunch time, and once a month, students travel to Manhattan to distribute food and clothes to the homeless.
Students were enthusiastic as they built their cardboard shelters. Junior Matt Africano, the club's co-president, has been a member of Midnight Run since his freshman year and said the sleep-out is the group's largest and most-anticipated event.
Eric Louis, a 17-year-old junior, was there with his parents, P.J. and Donna Louis. The event also teaches students the value of service to the community, said Donna, who is president of the high school PTA.
Mark Greenberg, the executive director of the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing and the guest speaker at the event, told students that the homeless are often harassed by young people and suffer some of the highest rate of hate crimes. The next morning during breakfast, two formerly homeless men spoke to the students about their experiences.
Though the students got just a small taste of the struggles the homeless face, Greenberg praised them for the empathy they showed by just participating in the event. “Homeless people are human beings who have just had a difficult time," he said.
