The Grade 5 girls at Auckland Park Preparatory School slept in the outside corridors in the cold on 19 June.
The school’s Kate Becker said, “The idea to have a sleep-out at school was hatched by Vicky Hyland, one of our two Grade 5 teachers, after hearing of the CEO SleepOut. Co-incidentally, the Grade 5 girls are currently reading a book, Mpho’s Search, by Sandra Braud which is about a young boy, who due to circumstances, was forced to come to Johannesburg to look for his father who was working on the gold mines. Mpho ends up ‘sleeping rough’ on the streets. These two things triggered the idea of our Grade 5 sleep-out.”
In order for the Grade 5 girls to fully appreciate what Mpho went through and to tie in with what the CEOs were doing, Hyland thought the girls could spend the night ‘sleeping rough’ in the outside corridors of the school. Instead of raising R100 000 each, the girls who were sleeping out brought a blanket for charity. “We also got the rest of the school involved and before we knew it, we had a school community blanket drive going as well. The response was incredible, we collected about 150 blankets in total and we donated these to Girls’ and Boys’ Town,” added Becker.
Becker explained, the girls were quite concerned about what they were going to eat and some thought they might even ‘starve to death’ as Mpho did. “We decided that we would earn our dinner money by polishing shoes at school during break and early in the mornings before school. The cost was R5 for a pair of shoes to be polished. The shoe polishing was a huge success and soon our dinner money stretched from chips only, to a Happy Meal. We raised R1 500 after polishing shoes for three days.”
The girls arrived with their cardboard boxes, sleeping bags and blankets with nothing in the way of creature comforts. “We were fortunate enough to be visited by three young representatives from Girls’ and Boys’ Town, who shared their stories with us. It was a humbling and meaningful experience. Justine Malala, one of our parents who is a reporter for the BBC, was at the CEO SleepOut and she came to share her sleep-out experience with us.
The event was extraordinarily powerful in its simplicity. The 30 girls in our two Grade 5 classes all agreed that for only one night ‘sleeping rough’ was manageable but they would not like to do it all the time.”
These are some of the things the pupils had to say:
“It was a little bit cold and a little bit uncomfortable.”
“Now we know how other people feel.”
“We were still lucky because we had hot chocolate.”
“The street sounds were so noisy it was difficult to sleep.”
Becker added that it was an incredible experience and one that no doubt will remain with the pupils for years to come. “These are our future CEOs in the making and we are so proud of each and every one of them,” she concluded.
