Pinellas County Point in Time Count<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\nWhat You Need To Know<\/p>\n
At St. Raphael Catholic Church, about 20 teens slept outside with minimal shelter to learn what it’s like to be houseless
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The kids could only bring three items. Some brought boxes, pillows, and tarps
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Guest speakers, like Pinellas Hope representatives, talked to teens about the issue
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They also made donations to shelters<\/p>\n
On Saturday night, dozens of teens slept outside without shelter to get a glimpse into the life of a person experiencing homelessness.<\/p>\n
Out in a field behind the St. Raphael Catholic Church, about 20 teens slept outside with almost nothing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI slept in a cardboard box,\u201d said Hudson Maphet, a teen participating in the program.<\/p>\n
They were only allowed to bring three items.\u00a0Maphet brought a pillow a blanket and deodorant. It\u2019s all part of the homeless retreat where teens from five churches are learning what it\u2019s like to be houseless.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m kind of used to the cold, so it didn’t hit me too hard until I decided to walk around in socks in the cold, wet grass. It was not it,\u201d Maphet said.<\/p>\n
Participants heard from experts about the issue. The director of the temporary emergency shelter,\u00a0Joe Pondolfino of Pinellas Hope, spoke to the group Saturday night. He said he was hoping to clear up any misconceptions the teens had.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s not about just looking at somebody on the street corner and saying, \u2018Oh, what did they do wrong?\u2019 It’s really what happened to them. So it’s really important to look at each person individually and it’s important for the next generation to help us tackle this problem,\u201d said\u00a0Pondolfino.<\/p>\n
And the problem is not going away. Pondolfino said Pinellas Hope is seeing about 20 new people a week.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt tells me that the problem still exists. It’s not gotten much better at this point, even though we do have some great successes. It’s something that we can’t take our eye off the ball,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
After hearing from Pondolfino and sleeping in the wet grass,\u00a0Maphet said even though they are teenagers, there are little things they can do to make a difference.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust a conversation, just a ‘How are you?’ A handshake \u2014 something, something of acknowledgment, because most of those people out there, they feel like they’re invisible and they’re very much so seen,\u201d\u00a0Maphet said.<\/p>\n
It was more than an experience, it was also an outreach event.<\/p>\n
Teens packed up lunches along with hygiene products that will be distributed to shelters like Pinellas Hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 It\u2019s a harsh reality, but several people in the Tampa Bay community are spending…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[767,1188,274,770,1192,2200,2204,115,139,596,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,2032,1374,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-49107","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-app-community","9":"tag-app-homelessness","10":"tag-app-top-stories","11":"tag-community-news","12":"tag-homelessness","13":"tag-instagram-bn9","14":"tag-instagram-n13","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-orlando","17":"tag-pinellas-county","18":"tag-st-pete","19":"tag-st-pete-headlines","20":"tag-st-pete-news","21":"tag-st-petersburg","22":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","23":"tag-st-petersburg-news","24":"tag-tampa","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-trending-topics","27":"tag-tyler-oneill","28":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}