By Aaron Cordy
THE plight of youth homelessness has not gone unnoticed by local businesses as the Salvation Army North East Youth Services is getting ready for its VIP Sleepout event, Under the Same Stars, this April at the Deakin Reserve.
Many people have signed up for the sleep-out, but more support is needed.
Matt Kington, owner of Stellar on Wyndham Street and Jon Pearce, Area Coach of RG Restaurants are two who will spend a night sleeping under the stars at Deakin Reserve for the local homeless youth.
“We have been in business in the CBD for 15-16 years now. So, I have seen people experiencing homelessness,” said Matt when talking about why he is supporting the USS event.
“I had a person show up one day who had been sleeping in old clothes in a car park. A nice, friendly, chatty guy, and he wandered in and said, ‘I just want to get warm, but I’ve got no money for a coffee.’ I said, of course, what’s going on? I wasn’t expecting anything, but we gave him a sandwich and all that sort of stuff, and he went on his way.”
“I was talking to a customer the other day who’d been living rough after a relationship breakdown, staying on a friend’s couch, trying to get into community housing, potentially staying in his car, if that falls through. I’ve had staff that are working 30 to 40, hours a week struggle to find a rental.”
Jon Pearce is the area coach of RG Restaurants, which has over 60 KFC outlets in the state. Despite Jon being new to Shepparton, RGR began in Shepparton with one store owned by Chris Retzos, so they understand the importance of helping the local community.
“We started here, the owner lives here, we’re very deeply ingrained in the community here. So, any sort of chance we get to support community events, and especially the youth in the Shepparton community, we jump at,” said Jon.
“We’re very passionate about the youth of Australia. Within KFC, we’ve got our own initiatives, like KFC Youth Foundation, and we partner with Black Dog and ReachOut and those types of things. But any sort of opportunity we get to help and support the community we want to be involved with.”
Event organiser Jim Gow wants everyone in the community to get involved. Tickets for VIP’s are $199, general public $49, and 16–25-year-olds are free.
The event is on Wednesday, April 16, at 6pm at the Deakin Reserve, going all night until 6am the following morning. Tickets are available online for both CEO’s/ VIP’s and the general public at https://www.trybooking.com/CXZLN.
This event is fully supervised and is a drug, alcohol, smoke and vape free event.
“I know there’s a lot of good businesses in town. There’s a lot of good people that do good things. And if I’m putting my hand up, I’m sure there’s a lot of other people that can. We can do it tough for one night. I think it’s going to be a bit of fun, 12 hours into it might be a bit of a challenge when I’ve had no sleep. We can all come and get plenty of coffee once the event is over. If people can do it for months or years, I’m sure, I can do it for one night,” said Matt.
