Grammar students get a feel for homelessness

A GROUP of Ballarat Grammar School students took part in a Sleep Out Challenge on Friday night while the temperature outside felt like minus nine degrees.

They explored the Kurt Hahn concept of putting themselves in the shoes of others and thinking about homelessness while spending the night in the school’s equipment gym.

Tim Adams, the schools’ Round Square Co-ordinator said the activity was about the Year 10 to 12 students experiencing the challenge and hardships many people in Ballarat face day-to-day.

“We hope this will help to embed a service ethic within our students from privileged backgrounds so they can pay it back to the community,” Mr Adams said.

“Kurt Hahn was a German educator and a key figure in the development of experiential education. He believed that students could only really understand life by experiencing it in many exciting and challenging ways.”

Ballarat Grammar is a member of the Round Square network of schools founded by Mr Hahn, which share practical opportunities to guide and educate students.

Kate Hawker, Year 11, and Alex Mulcahy, Year 10, said they haven’t had much exposure to homeless people and haven’t noticed anyone sleeping rough in their neighbourhoods.

“I consider myself quite sheltered, I went from living at home to boarding at school and school camps were probably the most hardship I’ve experienced,” Kate said.

“I think we will have an easy road tonight as we are lucky that we have our friends here with us tonight while a lot of homeless people are on their own.”

Alex said he thought it was going to be a tough night, moving around and not getting the sleep he usually does.

“It will be an eye-opening experience to see what the homeless people go through on a daily basis,” he said.

The night kicked off with Warrick Davison and Kate Dharumasena from UnitingCare Ballarat talking about the city’s homeless and that homelessness can happen to anyone.

“They took everything we said on board and hearing the case studies that Kate shared humanised a construct that the kids could relate to,” Mr Davison said.

The kids had a soup-shelter style meal afterwards comprising a cup of tomato soup and a piece of bread.

They were required to bring their own bedding and all bedding items were boxed up on Saturday to be donated to those in need.

Kate took a second had sleeping bag, sleeping mat and pillow.

“The sleeping bag didn’t do up properly so I felt a little chilly through the night and a little uncomfortable on the ground,” she said. “I went to bed extremely hungry and woke up hungry.”

Like transient life on the streets, the students had to move locations during the night and resettle with their possessions again.

Both Alex and Kate agreed it was a pretty rough night.

“We had to grab all our stuff and get out, it was tough getting up in the middle of the night but we were pretty lucky the weather held out while we were moving around outside,” Alex said.

“This was a one off for us, but for many people around Ballarat this is their life. We are very fortunate.”

Kate found the constant disruptions a challenging element to the activity.

“I woke up thinking what is going on, feeling angry and just wanted to get back to sleep,” she said.

“We had to walk outside where it was really cold, then we had to settle down again and it took a while to get back to sleep.”