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'Sleep Out' to Focus Attention on Hunger, Poverty
By Stan Friedman
CHICAGO, IL (February 17, 2005) - Tim King has friends in low places. They
cling to the lower rungs of society's social ladder and find shelter on
Lower Wacker Drive, one level below Chicago's famed Miracle Mile. Over
the past three years, the North Park University junior has befriended a
number of the people who call the street their home and has spent a
number of nights with them.
Tim King also has been finding friends in a lot of other places -
students at Moody Bible College, Wheaton College and Washington
University in St. Louis, to name a few.
Beginning tomorrow (Saturday), they will spend a lot of time together as
part of a campaign to encourage people to actively work to end
homelessness, hunger and poverty. Students from across the Midwest will
participate in a 24-hour "sleep out" from noon Saturday to noon Sunday
on Michigan Avenue to help raise public awareness, educate and engage
people on the issues of homelessness, hunger and poverty. The signing of
a declaration calling for local, state and national governmental changes
will take place from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday and will include a press
conference.
King, a junior at North Park University, never thought an idea he threw
out among colleagues at a student-led national conference on hunger and
homelessness last October would turn into such an undertaking. "It's
kind of one of those things that if I would have thought of this at
first, I never would have tried," King says.
Initially, only about 30 students were expected to participate. But as
one conversation led to another and then to another, some five months
later King is leading an event attracting students from different states
and different types of universities, both faith-based and secular. King
hopes that more than 150 will participate.
King and others want the event to raise general awareness, improve
community participation in helping to deal with the social problems and
push for specific political action. That action, which is spelled out in
a "Declaration against Poverty and Covenant for the Common Good," calls
for city and state leaders to approve legislation that would ensure
affordable housing and prevent homelessness.
Organizers also hope the event will promote a new website -
www.tothestreets.org - that became active within the last several weeks.
The site serves as a portal to information about homelessness, also
resourcing organizations that work with these concerns. Already the site
has one informational video on homelessness, and King intends to add more.
King has been a tireless promoter of the event and cause. He recently
spoke with North Park University's faculty, who threw their support
behind the project, with some even offering extra credit to students who
participate. The event also has received the enthusiastic support of
Evangelical Covenant Church President Glenn Palmberg. "I think it is
great to see young people acting out their faith in acts of compassion,"
Palmberg says. "It's wonderful to see North Park, Moody and Wheaton
represented in a much wider circle - and to have it all led by a North
Park student."
King has been working with the homeless in one way or another since he
was 16, when he and a friend met and began to hang out with a man named
Ziggy. When King arrived at North Park, he began working with a student
ministry that was bringing sack lunches to the homeless in the city.
Until recently, ministry participants were bringing portable electric
grills to fix food and spent time playing games such as checkers with
individuals living on Lower Wacker Drive. Beginning this week, the
ministry will bring food prepared by the university's student cafeteria
caterer.
The "sleep out" is being preceded and followed by training sessions at
North Park University, led by individuals from different organizations,
including Call to Renewal. Although the event has a focus on Chicago,
King says it is important that the participants are coming from around
the Midwest as proof that what is happening in the city is part of a
national movement.
Praying with others on campus has helped to give King perspective on the
event and relieve a lot of pressure that he was feeling. "So much of my
concentration was that this has to be the biggest thing ever," King
says. "This is just the first step of a long race that I will be in."
King adds that he changed his prayer: "I kept asking God to keep
blessing what's happening here and my vision and changed it to 'God let
me follow your vision,' which took a lot off my shoulders."
Copyright © 2008 The Evangelical Covenant Church. |
