With the choice of either a card board box or roll-out mat a group of Sydney businessmen slept it rough in a stadium at Sydney’s Telstra Dome for St Vincent de Paul’s CEO Winter Sleep Out in a bid to raise funds for, and awareness of, the thousands of homeless people in Australia.”It’s the winter solstice – the longest night of the year – it’s dry in here but I think it’ll get pretty chilly before the night is out and it’ll give us a bit of taste of what its like sleeping under a bridge,” said financial planner Bernard Fehon, wearing a beanie and a long coat.
Apart from experiencing the wintry elements, Mr Fehon, along with fellow businessmen and students from Mount St Benedict’s High School at Pennant Hills, had the chance to share some experiences with those who had actually lived on the street. One of those men was Ivan, “I tell people the type of life I’ve been through so they will not take that same track.”
“It’s lonely, a lot of people have addictions – most of their money goes on drugs,” he said.
There are an estimated 100,000 homeless people in Australia.
From 2001 figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, more than half (54 per cent) of the homeless population were adults over 24 years of age, with 10 per cent under the age of 12 years and 36 per cent young people between 12 and 24 years. Less than half (42 per cent) of homeless people were female.
Greg, from St Vincent de Paul, said addressing homelessness is not a simple issue.
“We have to be careful we don’t reduce the answer to homelessness just to accommodation, it’s a lot more than that – researches are saying that up to 80 per cent of people have a mental illness, there’s the whole area of people losing hope and despair and then [we need to be] able to, in all different ways, build that hope back into some one’s life,” Greg said.
St Vincent de Paul, a Catholic Church organisation, is the largest provider of services and support for homeless people in NSW/ACT and it is powered by grassroots involvement with people in local communities.
“I firmly believe that change can be effected through grass roots action – and I think if we are able to mobilise people similar to that are here tonight – be it business CEOs or school students, if we mobilise some of those people into action for justice, I think that is how change will happen,” said Greg.
One of the businessmen behind the event, Philip Morphew, said they are planning to make the St Vincent de Paul’s CEO Winter Sleep Out
