Big boxes fill a courtyard between the buildings of Our Lady of Perpetual Help School. Girls on one side and boys on the other, they carefully tape boxes together and add a plastic covering.
It's all part of a mission: to feel what it's like to be homeless.
During the 30-hour "Let it Growl" retreat, hosted by OLPH church, high school students slept part of the night in boxes, performed service activities and ate minimally.
Angela Lewis Foster"They were starving. They kept saying 'When's our next meal?'" said Donna Jones, OLPH youth minister. The students' mini-meals included of a bowl of soup for dinner, a granola bar and half piece of fruit for breakfast, and a half peanut butter sandwich and half piece of fruit for lunch.
Everyone tucked themselves into their box homes around 11 p.m., but Jones never went to sleep. As the temperature plunged, she was lying awake worrying. "I kept trying to doze off and I thought, what if I doze off and wake up and someone has frozen?" she said.
Jones ended up rounding up her charges around 2:30 a.m. and taking them to the gym for the remainder of the night. Usually -- the school tradition began in 1999 -- the students stay out all night as long as the temperature remains above freezing, but sometime after midnight it dipped to 25 degrees.
The group spent Saturday doing volunteer work at Dalewood Middle School and with local charities.
The Rev. Mike Nolan says he got the idea for the homeless campout from his uncle, the Rev. Emil Masich, who introduced a similar program to the youth of St. Mary Byzantine Catholic Church in Cleveland, Ohio.
Jones, in her seventh year to oversee the project, says they have had as many as 90 participants at once, but now limit the group to 40 or fewer.
Jones says she loves the program because she wants to "grow a generation of people that care." She says the experience lets them see what homeless people face every day, and it makes them appreciate the beds, warm showers and unlimited food they have at home.
"They went home hungry, cold, tired, but I think they had a sense that they accomplished something and did something for other people," Jones said.
Photo Moment is a weekly column by the Times Free Press photo staff that explores the seldom-told stories of our region.
Girls prepare boxes to camp out during "Let it Growl," a 30-hour period to raise the awareness of homelessness.