Leaving for my friend’s house, were doing the SASH big sleep out; a night sleeping rough to raise money for the SASH homeless charity. Getting to the event I was feeling quite apprehensive as, we didn’t know what to expect. We both had a sleeping bag, a cardboard box, warm clothes Getting to the community centre with our cardboard boxes in tow, we noticed people were building massive shelters out of the cardboard they had brought, and me and my friend only had enough for a box each. The shelters being built were pretty impressive, with the use of tarpaulin, decorations, and lots and lots of cardboard. When we asked someone about where we were able to sleep, we were told we could sleep anywhere in the grounds of the Tang Hall Community Centre. We decided to look round the back of a building, and we found a garden area, and decided to sleep on the grass there. We went inside the community centre, and there was free tea and coffee, biscuits, soup all night, and the donation buckets seemed to be filling up. After donating some money, we got a hot drink, and just reflected with each other about what it means to be homeless, how much we take for granted, how tiring and isolating it must be to not have a place to call home. While we were sitting there (we had moved on to soup) the presentations and talks started. There was information about what SASH do, with testimonies from previous teens who have been helped by SASH, and the people who offered up a room in their house to help teens get off the streets. All the volunteers talked about how rewarding it was for them to be able to offer a room to someone who has nowhere else to go. All the teens talked about how much respect and love they have for the hosts who took them in. After these videos, there was a talk by Labour MP Rachel Maskel, who talked not only about the work that SASH do to help the homeless community, but also about the epidemic of homelessness nationally and specifically about the homeless crisis in York. After these talks me and my friend decided to have another cuppa and then go to sleep for the night. Getting in our sleeping bags ready for the night, I realised that I had not wrapped up nearly as well as I should, all I had on was a hoodie and some thin pyjama bottoms, but luckily my sleeping bag helped to warm me up a little. As I was trying to get off to sleep, I started reflecting about what being homeless would actually be like; sleeping rough for one night isn’t a big thing for people who know they have a home to go back to, a home where they can put the heating on, maybe a home where they have family round them. But it reminded me how important the work charities such as SASH and Shelter, to try and give people somewhere to call home, somewhere they feel safe, and I realised that I wasn’t sad that people were homeless, I felt angry. Angry that people have to suffer everyday, politicians and the media talk about our country as being one of the largest economies and an accepting country, but why in such an advanced country are there people living on the streets, why are people being dehumanized by society because they live on the streets and people won’t look them in the eye. Why am I laid here, feeling fed up because I can’t get to sleep because I can’t get comfortable. I can’t get comfortable and it’s a clear night where I am, there are people sleeping around the world, in wind, rain, hail, snow. How do people live like this? But for some, it isn’t living, its surviving. In the westernised civilisation we live in, how can people still be on the streets, living in hostels, B&B’s, living on their friend’s couch. Lying there, on a patch of grass in a community centre, I had the realisation that even though I complain about a lot of things in day to day life, but I don’t realise how much better off I am than so many other people. When I finally got to sleep, I must have only had a few hours’ sleep, because before I knew it, my friend was waking me up (we had a pact; the first person to wake up wakes the other). It was only 5am, but it was already getting bright, and we made our way to get a cuppa, where we discussed how we felt, and how we were definitely going to keep a look out for more sleep outs. When I finally got home, I woke up my housemate, and talked about the sleep out, I’m not too sure she was that interested at 6am, but after coming into consciousness, she seemed really happy that I had did it, and donated money to SASH. When I finally went into my bedroom, as I needed sleep as I had uni work to do, I’ve never been so happy to see my bed, which got me thinking, if I’m getting emotional over seeing my bed after a crappy night’s sleep while sleeping rough, how must people who have been on the streets feel about seeing a bed that they are able to sleep in?