Helping the hungry and homeless
St. Michael's prepares for a week of awareness

Katie Colleran | staff editor

For a college student who has food readily available and a warm bed to sleep in, it can be hard to imagine living life hungry and homeless.

National Hunger and Homelessness Week, from Nov. 10-17, works to bring students a new perspective concerning the issues of hunger and homelessness in the areas they live. This year, a new focus will be on promoting advocacy, with old favorites, like the shack, making an appearance.

Advocating for change

Senior Amelia Holston, one of the coordinators of National Hunger and Homelessness Week at St. Michael’s, came up with the idea of promoting awareness of hunger and homelessness to students from an advocacy perspective.

During the week, students will have the chance to cook a meal for the residents of St. John's Hall, like these two St. Michael's students. Photo courtesy of Heidi St. Peter

“It’s going to be about what you can do to stop hunger and homelessness,” Holston says. “We don’t want it being about just bombarding students with facts.”

To promote advocacy, there will be an information table in Alliot Monday through Friday. The table will provide an opportunity for students to take part in a letter-writing campaign.

“The letter will be a template, such as ‘Dear senator/congressman, I am a St. Michael’s student and these are the issues I am concerned about regarding hunger and homelessness,'" says Ashley George, an employee with the Committee on Temporary Shelter (COTS). “They can just sign it or write a note about anything, like affordable housing or livable wages.”

George is a 2005 alumna of St. Michael’s. She helped organize
Hunger and Homelessness Week as a student and was happy to provide encouragement to this year’s planning team, she says.

“Being engrossed in homelessness now, I wanted to provide whatever support I could,” George says.

Part of the week includes a fund-raising effort, and one of the charities the money goes to is COTS. The goal is to raise $1,000 and then divide it evenly between COTS and Habitat for Humanity, Holston says.

“COTS receives money because of the temporary shelter they provide and other services they do to help with homelessness,” she says. “Habitat for Humanity gets money to recognize the work they do building houses.”

By promoting advocacy through letters and other activities, such as a trip to one of the COTS shelters, Holston hopes students get involved, she says.

“I hope it will kind of happen naturally,” Holston says. “I hope that people will learn something during the week that sparks them to make a difference.”

Being aware of the issues

One of the crucial elements of the week is that it sheds light on the problem of hunger and homelessness in the St. Michael’s area. According to a study done by Vermont Agency of Human Services, about 1 in 11 Vermonters lives in poverty. Many students do not realize the depth of hunger and homelessness in their community, and in turn, do nothing to help fight it, Holston says.

“It’s something the students don’t really think about,” she says. “They need to understand it’s out there. We are living in it right now.”

Many of the events during the week will bring the enormity of the hunger and homelessness issue to campus. All week there will be a shack near St. Edmund’s Hall. Students can sign up to sleep there overnight or spend a few hours during the day there. Also, on Monday night, George will be on-campus with a guest speaker - a woman who was formerly homeless, living in a COTS shelter with her four children.

“She is now housed and making ends meet,” George says. “She will be talking about what it was like to be homeless and the challenges she faced. She will put a face to the cause.”

Holston is most looking forward to hearing the speaker, she says. Having the guest-speaker will highlight an increasing trend in the area of homelessness.

“The group of homeless on the rise is not individuals, it's families,” George says. “There’s lots of kids who are not being tucked into their own bed at night. The COTS shelters always have a waitlist and that doesn’t settle well with me.”            

Pulling the week together

Normally run by Temporary Relief, a program with St. Michael's Mobilization of Volunteer Efforts (MOVE), Hunger and Homelessness Week has been taken on this year by the college's Honors Program. Holston, a member of both was in charge of delegating jobs because she has previously participated in the week, she says.

“Students in the Honors Program will do all the jobs,” she says. “They have really been the ones putting everything together.”

During the week, students will have a chance to sleep in a shack as a simulation of what it's like to be homeless. Katie Colleran, photo

Junior Shannon St. Pierre volunteered to help with the week because she wanted to be more involved, she says. A large part of her work has included organizing the week’s food drive.

“In order to get people to donate money and food, we are trying to cover all the areas,” she says. “We’ll have coin drops in the academic buildings and we’ll be going door to door in the townhouses asking for food.”

St. Pierre wants her work to make students more aware of the issues of hunger and homelessness, she says.

“In some ways, people are apathetic, saying, ‘I don’t have to deal
with it, it’s not my problem,'” she says. “But, I’m sure there’s people in homeless shelters who are college graduates, so we are not that disconnected.”

Junior John Lucy was in charge of organizing the vigil that will be held on Nov. 10 after the 7 p.m. Mass. The vigil will include candles, prayers and reflection, he says.

“At a Catholic school, part of the mission is to love your neighbor, to make sure we are all on an equal foot,” Lucy says. “As long as we get people to start thinking about the issues and what they can do to help, then our job is done.”