Seevic

As part of a college wide project on Poverty and Homelessness, college tutor Dave Brock slept rough outside the college on Tuesday 24th January.

Dave started his ‘homeless’ session at 2.30pm when the students were off timetable and will remained outside the college until 9am the following morning to launch the Humanities Faculty project on poverty. Dave, who is head of faculty for Humanities at the college and teaches law, collected donations on behalf of SHELTER and is doing this in an attempt to raise awareness to the students by them witnessing him on their way out in the afternoon and there again on the way back into college.

The day before Dave said “I have been keeping a close eye on the weather forecast for the night and there is expected to be another cold snap and rain is forecast. I’ll have to prepare myself for the worst, but it will be a timely way to encourage the students to appreciate what extremes the homeless have to endure and to be able to understand a little better what rough sleepers go through night after night.”

As part of the project students also bought in unwanted Christmas presents that will be donated to a women’s refuge. It is intended that these items will be used as Birthday presents throughout the year. In another initiative the students are going to raise funds to sponsor a child in a developing country to raise awareness of poverty in the 3rd world. It is intended that this final project will be an ongoing charity rolling from year to year.

For their final project the students will be challenged to do a supermarket online shop for a family of 4 with just the unemployment benefit and child allowance. “The students will need to discover if this will leave them with enough funds for items that they take for granted such as mobile phones and trips to the cinema” added Dave.

After his night in the cold Dave quoted "It made me realise that true homeless people are not only hungry, lonely and cold - but that they must have this feeling of vulnerability which can only be heightened by a real attack of which I am sure many have suffered".

Over £345 was raised for the charity SHELTER and a number of boxes of gifts were left to be donated to the Women's Refuge.