Operation Come Home reality campaign - a recap of #OCHReality

This morning, I stopped at my regular Tim Horton’s on my way to work. Between the time I ordered and the time I got to the window at 3:45 in the morning, all three employees were at the window to greet me excitedly – they had been worried I had died. I explained that it has been a long, rather unusual month.

The reality campaign for Operation Come Home kicked off the way it does, every year, with the original 24 Hours Of Homelessness event. This is where a bunch of people stay outside and sleep on the street for 24 hours to call attention to the plight faced by so many youth in our community, youth who are helped by Operation Come Home. This year was our most successful ever, with an amazing NINETEEN people taking part – the weather helped somewhat there, as it was close to zero for most of the 24 hours. (Previous years have dipped to -40 or worse, and two years ago there were only 2 of us left at the end of the event!)

We received incredible support from so many people for this event, from the Royal Oak at Bank & Gloucester, the CHEZ nation, my fellow employees, a dozen amazing local bands and several former and current clients of Operation Come Home who, once again, stayed with us through the entire night in order to share stories about life on the street and to ensure we remained safe! We ended up with more than $10,000 in donations from that day alone, which is easily the most donations we’ve ever had in a single day of the reality campaign, thank you!

The one thing about the extreme cold is that it makes people pay attention to the 24 Hours event more. And when it’s -40, it’s very easy to explain why that sucks for the homeless youth who may have to brave that weather and find, say, a parking garage in which to spend the night. It’s not quite so obvious when it’s +3 overnight – but trust me when I say this, as a veteran of 14 24 Hours events. The -40 is way worse for the 24 hours. The +3 is way worse afterward. When it’s freezing you get home, and once you warm up you’re fine. This year, the dampness of +3 got into our bones and it took me three days to thaw out. So no matter the weather in the winter, it sucks for our homeless, day in and day out. Believe that.

Up next, starting the very next Sunday (when most of us hadn’t yet thawed out) we began the $24 challenge – The $24 was determined by calculating the amount the Ontario Works provides to homeless youth for a monthly allowance minus expenses like (saving up for) rent, a phone bill, bus pass, etc. The amount remaining to be spent on food would be approximately $24 per week. Just about EVERY SINGLE EMPLOYEE of Operation Come Home joined me in the challenge, which took some serious planning on everyone’s part – some of us were better at this than others. (This is one reason I had no coffee that week – I just plain couldn’t afford it on $24! It was all oatmeal, brown rice, black beans and fake kraft dinner from Giant Tiger ($0.50 a box!))

That’s Lynda (who organized almost all of this), Katie, Jake, David, Emily and our favourite local celebrity chef Steph the Grilling Gourmet, all of whom participated in the $24 challenge. Here are some of them with their thoughts (bear with me – it’s the first video I ever made / edited / uploaded myself!) –

To cap off the $24 challenge, the following Tuesday we held the first annual Poor Chefs competition, where four local star chefs made the best dish they could with a budget of just over $3. The winner was Stephen LaSalle of the Albion Rooms restaurant. I realize now that I took no pictures at this event, because I was hosting it. And making the above video. The only picture I did take, trying to convince people to come out to the event, was this one of Megan:

I’m including the photo here only because Megan is super hot and it’s nicer to look at than my 40 photos of oatmeal. If you’re interested in those, feel free to follow my usually-not-so-boring Instagram account!

Now, this past week we’ve held the ‘Vice Battle’ – calling attention to the difficulties faced by so many homeless youth who struggle with addiction. A bunch of us gave up a vice for the week – for some (Katie) that was her car. For others (Lynda, Rachel) that was coffee. For me, it was smoking. For seven days. Which also meant I gave up everything that triggered my impulse to smoke, which included beer – and coffee. The idea was that we would give something up for a week, then donate the money we would have spent on that thing to Operation Come Home. So this morning, I donated $80 – the amount I would have spent on smoking this week. I encourage others to follow the link and do the same!

There’s no good way to convey the irritation I have felt throughout the month of February. The 11 pounds I lost and the malnutrition I suffered and the short fuse I developed over the course of the $24 challenge. The inability to sleep properly or regulate my body temperature after the 24 hours. The way I snapped at almost everyone who talked to me during the past week of quitting smoking. I can’t explain any of those things individually, as words do none of them justice. Now, imagine being a homeless youth who is trying to turn things around. While living on the streets. And struggling to eat well. And coping with addiction – all at once, not one week at a time, mind you! Think about that for a moment, and maybe you understand a little bit more when someone has a short fuse, or doesn’t seem able to pay attention. A final snapshot, though, perhaps. For the month of February, I decided to add one more measure to the success of the reality campaign. This is how hard it has been – on January 27th, this beard was as brunette as Mila Kunis.

Some incredible work done by dozens of incredible people who donated their time, money, energy and effort to make this year’s reality campaign easily the best yet. Special shout-out to Leigh Bursey and his band Project Mantra. Leigh is a city councilor in Brockville (still the youngest councilor ever elected) and an anti-poverty activist who volunteered to kick off our Royal Oak fundraiser during the 24 Hours of Homelessness event. We then sat down for a long talk about poverty, homelessness and similar issues, which you can hear here. Then when we were all done with the $24 Challenge, Leigh took it upon himself to join us and bring that part of the reality campaign out to Brockville! Leigh and Quinton Howes created a blog for their $24 challenge and I’ll leave you with that – it’s a really good read!