This week! Rough sleeping for Seaview

This Friday, it’s The Big Sleep Hastings 2016 – with the goal to raise more funds for the Seaview Project than last year (£23,000) – and simultaneously raise awareness of homelessness. HOT’s Zelly Restorick takes up the HOT Big Sleep baton from last year’s cardboard citizen, Nick Terdre. She’ll be joining up with the many other one-night-insomniacs who’re taking part in the experience, united by spending the night in a cardboard city at the Stade.

‘We’re all just threee steps away from homelessness’ is something purportedly said by The Big Issue‘s founder, John Bird. Divorce. Loss of job. Disconnection from offspring. Illness. Any of life’s lottery of crises that might cross our paths at some point. It’s possible that any of us can stare into the dark abyss at some point in our lives.

The Seaview Project doesn’t only support people without homes, but anyone who feels – or is – on the edge of society, who feels vulnerable or excluded – or prefers to exclude themselves, as they cannot/do not want to fit in with the mainstream. Every person has a unique story as to how they arrive at Seaview’s doors.

And we don’t have to look or go too far away to find ‘our tired, our poor, our huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of our teeming shore, the homeless and tempest-tost’. (Words adapted from The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus, whose words accompany The Statue of Liberty.) 

*

*

*

*

A shameless plug by Zelly for your donation!

🙂 Zelly’s Big Sleep Sponsorship page.

*

*

*

*

I know my hips won’t like me sleeping on a bed of cardboard, so on the night and in the early hours it will be good to tune in to the entertainment and offer of sustenance, courtesy of Steve Furst, The Rufus Stone Band and King Size Slim*, a soup kitchen and porridge in the morning. I’m imagining there might be a few of us who experience The Big No Sleep.

Granted, not your normal night as a homeless person, but a tiny insight and experience – and all the money raised goes direct to the Seaview Project, where chief officer Annie Whelan and her crew steer an honourable savvy caring ship, providing much needed well-being and support services to those in the town whose lives aren’t going so well or who need some help. And simultaneously making a vital contribution for all of us who live in Hastings and St Leonards-on-Sea, n’est-ce pas?

Here’s hoping for a dry night, otherwise we’ll have to come up with some ingenious alternatives to cardboard.

The link to my Big Sleep Fund Raising Page is here (again!) in case you know anyone else who might be interested. Please spread the word! THANKING YOU VERY MUCHLY!

The Seaview Project website here.

* Link to HOT King Size Slim post here.

Also in: Hastings People

« He saw, he swam, he cone-quered
Lorna Strawson – White Rock Theatre’s bright new face »