Stocks are at record highs and economy is gaining strength. Those improvements aren't much solace to people without a fixed place to call home. Tonight, just like every night more than 610,000 people in America will be forced to find shelter either in the streets or other public setting. Nearly a quarter of them will be under 18.
Trying to help these homeless and at-risk children is what Covenant House has been doing since 1972. This isn't about handouts. A hot-meal and safety are great but Covenant House wants to effect lasting, meaningful change in kids' lives. That means preparing them for a life earning and providing for others.
Kids who want to stay at Covenant House are expected to keep regular hours, work on getting a degree and take part in training that will help them secure a good job. In other words, they build a stable foundation for the rest of their lives.
Maybe it's that goal-based vision that inspires executives and leaders like Brain Cashman of the New York Yankees to get involved with the group.
Cashman and the others don't have much in common with those kids – except for one night a year when he, like me, and dozens other executives spend a night on the cold hard streets.
"That’s one night and it’s miserable," he told Yahoo Finance when we visited him at his office, Yankee Stadium. "I can’t imagine taking that one night and making it a week, making it a month, making it in some cases a year or beyond, and somehow surviving that. That’s happening in the United States. It shocking to just say that."
Last year money from the sleep out and other fund raisers allowed the Covenant House to assist 57,364 homeless youth with crisis care and outreach in 27 cities across the U.S. Canada and Latin America. Every night an average of 1,900 kids sleep in safely thanks to Covenant House programs.
"Some people were thrown a curve early in life," Cashman points out. "Covenant House is there to welcome with open arms but they’re gonna put you through a program and get you pointed in the right direction."
The executives don’t just spend a night on cold hard concrete. They also have a chance to meet the kids the covenant house serves. It's those interactions that Cahsman finds most impactful and that has kept him coming back for the last four years.
As I prepare for my second year sleeping out, I fully admit it's made a lot easier with the knowledge that it's not the life and death experience these kids go through every night. Still, sleeping in a New York City parking lot near Hell's Kitchen is more than enough to make you really appreciate what the kids are facing in a world without groups like Covenant House.
As Cashman says in the attached clip, "If we can effect change, how can you not try?" We'll be trying again on November 20th. Please consider donating.