Family Promise of Lima-Allen County is an organization that helps homeless families through food donations and shelter. They teamed up with Trinity United Methodist Church to raise money and awareness for a topic that often gets overlooked: homelessness.
"We asked the participants to take in donations and sponsorships to rent a box for the evening," said Jodi McDaniel, coordinator of the cardboard city. "We asked them to raise awareness about homelessness and they obviously had to sleep in their box and be uncomfortable."
Most of the overnight citizens of the cardboard city were local kids, who may not have known much about people who are homeless, but sleeping in a box could change their perspectives.
"Homelessness is a different image now, there are people that these kids might even go to school with, that are maybe in their own community or in their own churches that are struggling," McDaniel said. "We just really want youth and kids to know that they do not know that person's story; they can smile and be nice to that person, whether they know or not their struggles, because every single one of us has some kind of struggle."
For all of the people that participated in the cardboard city, they now have a better understanding of the lives of the less fortunate.
"It was really hard and not very comfortable; you kept on waking up in the middle of the night because of noises and things, but it felt really good being here and raising awareness," said Emily Hendrickson, a participant of the cardboard city.
The experience even inspired some to take additional action in the future.
"I would like to start donating money to homeless people to get them a dinner or a drink so that they can be filled up for the next day," said Amiyah Collier, who also slept in a box overnight.
All $2,500 raised for the cardboard city will be used by family promise to help out the homeless in Lima and Allen County.
