Paola High School students (from left) Paige Queen, Sydney Peterson and Timmie Morris assemble a fort from cardboard and duct tape during the fifth-annual Camp Out 4 Cash event at Panther Stadium. Students spent the night on the field Saturday to raise awareness about homelessness and to benefit My Father’s House Community Services. (Photo by Erin Wisdom / ewisdom@miconews.com)
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Students brave cold to benefit others
Fifth-annual Camp Out 4 Cash event Saturday raises more than $1,000 for My Father’s House
By Erin Wisdom, ewisdom@miconews.com
Saturday night was cold. And with only a layer of cardboard separating them from the 20-degree chill, so were the Paola High School students camped out on Panther Stadium’s football field.
But they at least had good cause to be cold. The night was the fifth-annual Camp Out 4 Cash event benefitting My Father’s House Community Services, located at 1004 N. Pearl St. After going door-to-door earlier in the day collecting donations for the homeless shelter, students from the high school’s developmental leadership class and student council stayed on the football field from 9 p.m. until 6 a.m. Sunday to experience for themselves what it’s like to be without a home on a winter night.
“It makes us want to help more, because this is awful,” Timmie Morris said as she worked, without gloves, to peel duct tape off its roll. “This is not fun.”
Even if it wasn’t all fun, the event was definitely profitable. Students collected about $1,300 Saturday, bringing their total over the past five years to about $20,000 for My Father’s House. Because the shelter receives a grant that provides $80,000 for every $20,000 it brings in itself, Camp Out 4 Cash has actually made it possible for My Father’s House to receive $100,000.
And the event has also provided more than money.
“We appreciate the fund-raising component of what you do,” My Father’s House Director Jay Preston told students at the start of the night. “But just as important is the way you’re raising awareness. It’s an ongoing battle to make people realize there’s homelessness in our community.”
To make the issue even more real to students, Preston brought a shelter resident named Lisa to speak about her experience with homelessness. She told them that, after her fiancé kicked her out, she’d had no choice but to stay in her car with her two children — sometimes on nights as cold as Saturday’s.
“It’s really, really, really hard to live without a house,” she said. “I hope you guys learn that tonight.”
Many of the 23 students knew it already, having participated in previous Camp Out 4 Cash events. With this experience came strategies for making the cold more manageable — or at least an understanding of what they were up against.
“You wake up covered in condensation,” Jackie Thompson said. “The waking up and the last few hours are the worst.”
Across the field from Thompson and the other girls in her fort, Gus Hart, Hayden Mersman and Adam Henn had a strategy they hoped would save them from waking up wet.
Their two-level structure was also a kind of compromise between Hart, who was concerned about having the coolest fort on the field, and Mersman, who was concerned about contracting hypothermia: A small lower level reduced the amount of space the boys had to warm with their body heat, while a second level complete with a flag created a more impressive appearance.
Another strategy for keeping warm, of course, was to find ways to distract themselves from the cold. Hart, Mersman and Henn managed this by singing “Yellow Submarine” as they constructed their fort, and later in the night, all of the students had an opportunity to focus their thoughts on leadership activities rather than on the temperature. The incentive to do well in the competitions was high, as the reward for winning was hand warmers.
And if all these strategies for withstanding the cold came up short, the students had at least one thought from Preston to fall back on to make the night bearable — and to remind them of one significant difference between them and the truly homeless.
“Sometime tonight,” he told them, “think about the idea that tomorrow morning, you can go home.”
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But they at least had good cause to be cold. The night was the fifth-annual Camp Out 4 Cash event benefitting My Father’s House Community Services, located at 1004 N. Pearl St. After going door-to-door earlier in the day collecting donations for the homeless shelter, students from the high school’s developmental leadership class and student council stayed on the football field from 9 p.m. until 6 a.m. Sunday to experience for themselves what it’s like to be without a home on a winter night.
“It makes us want to help more, because this is awful,” Timmie Morris said as she worked, without gloves, to peel duct tape off its roll. “This is not fun.”
Even if it wasn’t all fun, the event was definitely profitable. Students collected about $1,300 Saturday, bringing their total over the past five years to about $20,000 for My Father’s House. Because the shelter receives a grant that provides $80,000 for every $20,000 it brings in itself, Camp Out 4 Cash has actually made it possible for My Father’s House to receive $100,000.
And the event has also provided more than money.
“We appreciate the fund-raising component of what you do,” My Father’s House Director Jay Preston told students at the start of the night. “But just as important is the way you’re raising awareness. It’s an ongoing battle to make people realize there’s homelessness in our community.”
To make the issue even more real to students, Preston brought a shelter resident named Lisa to speak about her experience with homelessness. She told them that, after her fiancé kicked her out, she’d had no choice but to stay in her car with her two children — sometimes on nights as cold as Saturday’s.
“It’s really, really, really hard to live without a house,” she said. “I hope you guys learn that tonight.”
Many of the 23 students knew it already, having participated in previous Camp Out 4 Cash events. With this experience came strategies for making the cold more manageable — or at least an understanding of what they were up against.
“You wake up covered in condensation,” Jackie Thompson said. “The waking up and the last few hours are the worst.”
Across the field from Thompson and the other girls in her fort, Gus Hart, Hayden Mersman and Adam Henn had a strategy they hoped would save them from waking up wet.
Their two-level structure was also a kind of compromise between Hart, who was concerned about having the coolest fort on the field, and Mersman, who was concerned about contracting hypothermia: A small lower level reduced the amount of space the boys had to warm with their body heat, while a second level complete with a flag created a more impressive appearance.
Another strategy for keeping warm, of course, was to find ways to distract themselves from the cold. Hart, Mersman and Henn managed this by singing “Yellow Submarine” as they constructed their fort, and later in the night, all of the students had an opportunity to focus their thoughts on leadership activities rather than on the temperature. The incentive to do well in the competitions was high, as the reward for winning was hand warmers.
And if all these strategies for withstanding the cold came up short, the students had at least one thought from Preston to fall back on to make the night bearable — and to remind them of one significant difference between them and the truly homeless.
“Sometime tonight,” he told them, “think about the idea that tomorrow morning, you can go home.”