The UCC St. Vincent de Paul Society runs ‘Homeless Week’ each year in the hope of raising awareness, funds and resources for those sleeping rough throughout the winter months. Homelessness grips the lives of a growing number of Cork citizens and our concern grew primarily from the fact that the public have become desensitised by the increasingly prevalent sight of a person living on the streets, this fact supported by the number of those homeless who claim to feeling invisible as throngs of citizens pass by them daily. Therefore, this year our committee was dedicated to enhancing the Society’s presence on campus and teamed up with the UCC Simon Community Society for Homeless Week 2011, headed by the slogan “Help the Homeless be seen”.
An information stand was erected outside the college library providing the campus with facts and figures on homelessness, information on how both charities help the homeless, and brochures outlining the activities the UCC SVdP Society run and step by step instructions on how one can volunteer. The stand was manned by smiling faces that were ready to interact at all times, with fun methods of donation incorporated in the form the “Guess the Teddy’s Name” competition where students paid €2 to guess the name of a giant teddy they hoped to win, kindly donated by Smyth’s Toy Store. We also held a very successful food and clothes drive at the stand.
We ran ‘Battle of the Buskers’ between noon and 2 pm each day in the heart of the UCC campus where our buskers, whom we recruited from around campus, raised their fervent voices and a lot of money for SVP & the Simon Community. They were met with a great response from the students who donated generously. Many students were eager to get involved in volunteering and we were delighted to have over 150 new students sign up over the week. Coinciding with the Thursday lunchtime busking, we designed a ‘Euro Trail’ in the form of a shooting star with the donated €1 and €2 coins from that day which encouraged many people to donate further in order to complete the design. On the Thursday night we hosted the finale in the Campus Bar giving the acts another chance to perform while we held a raffle supported by local Cork businesses such as Scoozi’s, the Gate Cinema, Corona Cork Film Festival, the Opera House, and Welch Sport, as well as the UCC Shop and Students Union.
We furthered our presence by involving other UCC societies in the week. A member of the UCC Comedy Society, Dave Moloney, acted as MC for the Thursday night ‘Battle of the Buskers’ seizing the crowd’s attention with his humorous charm. Furthermore, the UCC Choral Society held a ‘Sing-along Cinema’ viewing of the Disney classic Lady and the Tramp which was thoroughly enjoyed by all who attended and all money raised was donated to Homeless Week.
To raise awareness of the brutal realities of the streets we invited Paul Sheehan, the campaign manager for Cork Simon Community, to speak on campus on the Tuesday evening. There was a great turnout and the event was sponsored by Domino’s Pizza which brought in all the pizza fanatics! Finally, this year the society is very proud to have brought back the SVP 24hour Sleep out. Members of the society camped out between 8am Wednesday morning and 8am Thursday morning demanding the attention the local newspapers, radio stations and the entire campus with their determination and goodwill with the result that sponsorships are still rolling in nearly a week later!
The success of the week has brought the issue of homelessness in Cork to the forefront of the minds of UCC, rose over €2000 as well as food and clothing, and increased the society’s number of volunteers, who we are gladly training in early January.
Needless to say we’re looking forward to next year’s Homeless Week already!