Empathy vs Sympathy-- Do "Box Cities" Really Work?

Overnight 'box city' will help homeless
Post Bulletin 10/06/07

Cardboard Box City -- the annual overnight event that raises money to help organizations serving Rochester's homeless families and individuals -- will be Oct. 19.

Participants will spend the night in cardboard boxes and tents in a temporary city that will be created at Soldier's Field.

Event helps kids empathize with homeless
Strauss News 10/04/07

Box City ’07 is an event for high schoolers that gives them a chance to experience an aspect of homelessness. The children who participate will sleep in a box on the Sussex County fairgrounds for a night to get a sense of what it’s like for people who sleep that way every night.

Interfaith Hospitality Network (IHN), a nonprofit program providing emergency shelter to homeless families, hosts the “experiential event” for high school youth to promote homelessness awareness. Participants are given a light supper, engage in learning activities and replicate the actual experience of being homeless by sleeping outside in a cardboard box.

Is there anyone else out there that thinks that this fundraising strategy makes a mockery of what individuals experiencing homelessness face every day? For starters, a lot of the homeless people I know or see don't have cardboard boxes, they have tents or nothing. They don't get cozy sleeping bags and footie pajamas.

I understand what these groups are tying to do, they are trying to be able to take the kids from "Wow, that sounds like it really stinks" to "I tried that for one night and it totally sucked. I feel your pain brother." But neither of the events above mention that there will be any "real live" homeless people there to answer questions and interact with the kids. To the participants, it is a giant sleepover. If you want to raise awareness take them to a soup kitchen just a couple at a time, not in a big pack, so they blend in with the regulars and feel what that first trip to the soup kitchen must feel like. Or, better yet, have them help work the soup kitchen for a few weeks. If you want people to even begin to comprehend what homeless individuals experience you need them to interact with homeless individuals. You can camp out in boxes all you want but you aren't going to change someone's view of homelessness until they meet that homeless individual who looks just like their grandfather or who has a heart wrenching story to tell.