Notes from the Director

September 2011

Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.

- Chinese proverb

Our 5th Annual Cardboard Box City is right around the corner and we are getting really excited. Each year when I decorate a refrigerator box, I stop and think what it would be like to not have a home. Even though I have heard the stories from over 70 different families, watched their faces as they changed from fear to relief at having a temporary home, it is totally different to be outside on a cold night lying in a cardboard box.

Most of our families have not slept in boxes. Many have slept in their car for extended periods of time. One dad even wrote a song about his toddler “growing up in a car seat.” The vast majority of homeless families have “couch surfed” from friend to friend, until they have no friends. Always, they had to be “on the lookout” for someone telling them to move on. More than anything, homelessness is about not having the security of a place to call your own. Without that security the world becomes a scary place. It is hard to concentrate on work – or parenting – or pretty much anything – but where your family will sleep tonight.

So go find a box (behind Sear’s is a good place), develop a theme and decorate it if you’re the creative type, and sign up for the Cardboard Box City right on this website. Start collecting money from anyone you know with a goal of at least $100 per box. Come and join us on Friday, October 14th. Do it for any number of reasons, but most importantly, sleep in a box so that you are involved in a solution to homelessness. Once involved, you will understand. And that is a wonderful thing!

Gloria Edwards

Executive Director