On Saturday morning, Duke Ellis sat eating breakfast with his friends. Hunched over their grits with sleep still in their eyes, they spoke of politics, the job market and, most of all, how to stay warm.
Duke and his companions do not have a home. His breakfast was provided by the Salvation Army headquarters on the corner of Main St. and Elmwood Ave., which hosted an event called Homeless for the Homeless this weekend. The participants, who slept outside in sub-freezing temperatures Friday night, learned precisely why men like Duke are so concerned with warmth.
“The purpose was to get us out of our comfort zones, to know what it feels like to be outside when it’s 30 degrees outside and to realize that [the homeless] are people with stories, with families,” said Brandon Clements, a recent graduate of Anderson University who helped organize the event.
The weekend’s activities began at 7:00 Friday night, with participants signing in and staking out sleeping areas in the Salvation Army’s outdoor courtyard. Many of the people in attendance were USC students, but adults and high school students came with church groups from around the state. A few participants came from as far away as Virginia.
Larkin Shaw, a second-year elementary education student at Clemson, said she heard about the event through Facebook. The event was extensively promoted in the weeks leading up to it, with a front-page article in The State and an extensive campaign featuring video posts on the popular social networking Web site.
The event was conceived and organized by members of Midtown Fellowship, a rapidly growing Columbia church that currently meets in the South Carolina State Museum. Leaders came early to guide people to the entrance and to set up projector screens.
During the night, they showed videos about homelessness in the Midlands, focusing on actual homeless men and women and their backgrounds. Participants sat silently on the ground and listened to stories of rape, addiction, abuse and poverty.
The presentations helped provide a unique perspective for the estimated 600 people gathered, most of whom spent the entire night under the stars.
“We do this for a night, but there are people in Columbia who have no recourse but this,” said Stephen Fischer, a third-year psychology student at USC. Many other participants spoke of the night as an eye-opening experience.
“If I could sleep during the day, I would,” said Midtown Fellowship Pastor Dustin Willis, reflecting on a frigid night of limited sleep. “No wonder we see people sleeping in Finlay Park in the middle of the field during the day; they want the sun on them.”
Another purpose of the event was “to create an undeniable spectacle to draw attention to the problem,” said Fischer, and the extensive media presence spoke to the accomplishment of this goal.
The second day of the project focused on community service, with groups helping at various homeless charity organizations in the area. Destinations included Habitat for Humanity, Goodwill Industries and the Hannah House women and children’s shelter.
The rationale behind the service projects was fairly simple.
“Jesus met needs,” said Willis. Clements, along with many participants, pointed to Matthew 25:45, the Bible verse in which Christ tells his disciples, “Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”
Not all participants, however, came for religious reasons. Emily Stanek, a fourth-year sociology student at USC, came with the Omega Phi Alpha service sorority.
“It’s a problem directly related to Columbia and the USC area,” she said, sitting at a table at a homeless outreach bazaar Saturday afternoon. “It’s something you can easily do to make a difference.”
The bazaar, one of the planned events, drew a large crowd of homeless men and women and included food distribution, haircuts, games and music. As a drum circle gained members and volume, many homeless people challenged students to chess matches.
One man in a paint-splattered hoodie jacket stood aside as a spectator of the games, offering up trivia and commentary.
“I think the city’s working for the homeless now instead of trying to get rid of them,” said the man, who goes by the nickname “Duck.” He still has suggestions, though.
“A lot of people have no desire to go down to the new shelter because they think it’s a police trap,” he said, referring to the new, city-funded Emergency Winter Shelter.
“They are doing more to help the problem, and we want to join them,” said event organizer Clements, providing a similar assessment of the city government’s recent responses to the problem of homelessness.
In addition to providing volunteer aid and raising community awareness, the Homeless for the Homeless event served as a fundraiser, with all revenue from registration fees and T-shirt sales benefiting the Midlands Interfaith Homelessness Action Council.
Pastor Willis estimated that, as of Friday night, they had generated between $10,000 and $15,000 for the group.