The We Cancerve Movement, Inc.
Bringing swift solutions to children in sad situations because happiness shouldn't have to wait!
Youth, we can help!
in 2015, Harford County officials counted more than 200 people living in homeless shelters and on the street. There are dozens more homeless people - including children - living from sofa to sofa, in cars and in the woods.
Every child deserves a warm, safe place to sleep.
Homeless for a night
A last-minute family trip in Oct. 2015 didn't stop We Cancerve Founder Grace Callwood from participating in homeless for a night. She slept on a hotel balcony all night at age 10. She how she gest ready for it in the first video. The second is her reaction the morning after her experience.
Do you know any young people brave enough to step outside of their comfort zones and sleep outside, or in a scary or unfamiliar place with friends or classmates?
If so, we have just the project for you: it’s called “Homeless for a Night” and it’s intended for young people to sleep either outside, in a major venue like a gymnasium or church fellowship hall or even in the scariest place in their family’s home all in an effort to (1) experience a glimpse of what it must be like for homeless children throughout our state (and country) and to (2) raise money to help pay for temporary housing for families with children in our community. Interested? Contact us today and check out what's required below:
Step One:
Contact We Cancerve and let us know you're interested in this project. Make sure you've picked your location, i.e., a school football field, school gymnasium or church fellowship hall, or you can offer youth the opportunity to sleep in the scariest places in their homes like a basement, closet, laundry room or mud room, or closet (or a combination of the two).
Step Two:
Identify who can participate and send them a link to the registration form We Cancerve will help you create online. (Or if you choose, you can set up your own online registration form.)
Step Three:
Let’s create a flyer together. Let's make sure our flyer targets the audience you want to attract. Perhaps it's only your schoolmates, classmates in your school section/block or maybe it's youth who regularly attend your church's youth group meetings and gatherings and their friends.
Step Four:
We'll help you build a schedule of activities for the night. Maybe your event ends at midnight or perhaps it ends at 9 a.m. the following morning. We Cancerve will help you create not only a meaningful - and impactful - schedule for your event, we'll also help you think through logistics (that is, how to move people in and out of the space safely).
Step Five:
A major component to this is the pledge portion. Every student can download a pledge sheet where they'll solicit financial commitments from their networks of friends, family and supporters. For every hour a student/youth sleeps in the designated location, the pledgee will commit $1, $5, $15, $20 or more (that's per hour!). So if your event is scheduled from 6 p.m. to midnight at a church fellowship hall, a single student could bring in between $6 and $120 depending on the amount pledged and the amount collected.
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Step Six:
We'll help you customize the rules for your event. Check out the packet (to the right) we put together a few years ago when we first imagined this project.
