Trinity will play host to over 600 people tonight for the World’s Big Sleep Out, an international event being staged to raise awareness of the homelessness crisis.
The sleepout, which will take place in 52 countries across the world – in cities such as London, New York, Edinburgh, Los Angles, New Delhi, Hong Kong and Brisbane – is being organised by Depaul, a cross-border homelessness charity.
Participants – who will enter through the Nassau St entrance – will be treated to a concert by the Script, as well as Dublin poet Stephen James Smith.
Gisèle Scanlon, the vice-president of the Graduate Students’ Union, was involved in the process. Speaking to The University Times, Scanlon said she was “humbled as a postgraduate student at the level of public financial support we as students have received in Team Trinity on the Big Sleep Out”.
She said that the sleepout has “prompted a discussion on homelessness, housing, & social exclusion”, and added: “I hope that the combined Trinity College voice can persuade national decision makers to look at researchers and research and consider evidence based policy.”
In Trinity, some professors have matched the activism with research: Dean of Research Prof Linda Doyle tweeted today about women’s homelessness, writing that a “distinctive feature of women’s homelessness is that it remains concealed, remote from public awareness and frequently side-lined by policy communities”.
“Women are less likely to be counted as homeless as they often occupy ‘hidden’ spaces in the homes of family or friends”, she wrote, referencing Women’s Homelessness in Europe, a book on the subject edited by Paula Mayock and Joanne Bretherton.
The World’s Big Sleep Out was the brainchild of Josh Littlejohn, a social entrepreneur who founded a cafe in Edinburgh that employs homeless people.
Speaking to BBC Scotland, Littlejohn – who has run sleepouts in Edinburgh for the last two years – said tonight’s event will be the last he helps organise.
He will sleep out tonight in New York’s Times Square, which has been closed for the occasion.
“It is beyond my wildest dreams that this could ever happen and so I want to end on a high”, he said.
“Next year I will continue with my local charity work.”
