Students simulate homelessness for one eye-opening night

Christian Gammon-Roy

Tribune

École élémentaire catholique Saint-Joseph students held their 3rd annual homelessness camp-out on Thursday, November 20, bringing in record attendance and a very interesting guest speaker. The activity began 3 years ago as a way for grade 7 and 8 students to put themselves in the shoes of a homeless person and gain some empathy and awareness, particularly as homelessness was becoming a higher-profile issue in West Nipissing. Students spend the night outside, sleeping in tents, and do activities that mimic the struggles of living precariously. The project was initiated by teacher Nina Perreault and has consistently grown with the participation of groups like No More Tears West Nipissing and Canadian Shield based in Sudbury.

As Perreault is proud to point out, this year’s camp-out set a record with 43 students attending, out of 60 in grades 7 and 8 at Saint-Joseph. The steady increase from 21 participants in 2023 and 33 last year, she attributes to her previous students talking up the event for the new ones. “They’re telling the ones coming in to do it, that it’s a fun night, they’ll learn a lot and have fun doing it,” she describes.

According to Perreault, residents are also becoming aware of the event and commenting on it. She mentions enthusiastic feedback at a local store where kids bought sleeping bags in preparation for the event. Seeing the recognition from the community at-large is a strong indication of success for Perreault, who says that the intention from the start was to raise awareness about homelessness, and have students “bring that information into their families and into their community, so it has a snowball effect” of destigmatizing homelessness.

“Even at the restaurant tonight, they were talking about it, asking us questions about it at the front counter when we were leaving,” adds Robin Cheslock, Clinical Director at Canadian Shield Health Care, and Perreault’s partner. Cheslock and Canadian Shield have been involved with the project since last year. Members of the organisation’s Mental Health Team came to help organize activities and talk about mental health and addictions. They are also there to provide support to students who may need it, as the subject matter can be sensitive and personal to some of them.

The main part of the event, of course, is the camp-out. Students set up tents in the school yard and slept outside in the cold November weather, getting a glimpse into the discomfort that comes with homelessness. During the night, other activities illustrated what a homeless person might have to endure. Some popular ones repeated from last year included the oven-mitt challenge and the garbage-bin scavenger hunt. The former involves students opening food packaging and then attempting to eat that food, all while wearing oven mitts, simulating the lack of dexterity resulting from having cold fingers, a common reality for someone living outside in the cold. The other sees students hunt for edible items hidden throughout the schoolyard, including some hidden in garbage bins, which Cheslock took great care in filling with wet and pungent food items. The food in the bins was all freshly bought and clean, but anyone wandering close to those bins was immediately assaulted by the concentrated stench of far too much garlic. Dumpster diving for edible scraps is not a pleasant experience, and this activity was meant to demonstrate that as accurately as possible.

Inspirational speaker turned his life around

A notable addition this year was speaker Rick Osborne and partner Heather, of Ozzy’s Garage. Rick, who was in prison for 25 years, has been working with youth since he got out in 2001. Initially, he did speaking engagements, describing how he went from a bullied youth to a hardened criminal, to now wanting to help steer kids away from that same path. Eventually, he began to apply his love of mechanical work, and the interest of local youth who saw him working in his home garage, to build Ozzy’s Garage. The idea struck him when he noticed youth coming by and helping to work on cars and motorcycles would be seemingly too preoccupied to put up a barrier when asked to talk about their life and their problems. “You take that frontal lobe out of the equation because they’re moving their hands, and now they’ll start talking,” describes Rick.

Ozzy’s Garage took that idea and turned it into a support program for at-risk youth. Rick was uniquely qualified as a mentor, having knowledge in mechanical work and having walked the path of an at-risk youth who fell into a life that he admits could have left him dead long ago. “The Satan’s Choice crew that I ran with, the last one died in 1991,” he points out.

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