Goderich High School Student Spent Twelve Hour Outside In Goderich Last Friday Night To Find Out What It's Like To Be Homeless

by Bob Montgomery

A sixteen year old high school student from Goderich joined Goderich Mayor Trevor Bazinet and Councillor Randy Carroll for twelve hours on the streets last Friday night.

April Selkirk says she grew up in a very giving family and saw her first homeless person when she was six or seven years old on a trip in Toronto with her grandmother. She has seen homeless people here who were much younger than she is, so it made sense to her to find out what it was like for people of all ages to become homeless and see what she could do to address the problem. She says last Friday was quite a challenge and she can't imagine what it would be like to live like that for 24 hours a day, every day.

Selkirk says she also can't imagine what it must be like for young people who grow up homeless and adapt to that life because that's what they know. It's a very easy trap to fall into and very difficult to get out of and very intimidating for young people in that situation to turn to adults for help.

Selkirk says what she got out of her night on the street in very cold weather was a better understanding of how easy it would be for people in that situation to turn to drugs and alcohol for comfort. She now understands what it feels like to get so cold you no longer have any feeling and using drugs or alcohol is the only way to get warm and if you're her age or younger it can very easy turn into an addiction as you get older, but you do what you have to to survive.

Selkirk says she would like to take what she's learned from her night on the street and make more young people aware of what other young people live with every night and get more young people to get behind supporting homeless people. She says she's only sixteen now but as she grows older she hopes to stay focused on the homelessness problem because it is affecting so many young people, who are dealing with mental issues as well as homelessness and they don't know where to reach out for help. She says the supports are there, but a lot of young people just don't know where to reach them and she'd like to change that.

April Selkirk