The Big Newman Sleep Out

On Friday 19^th April, 27 students and staff from Cardinal Newman took part in a big sleep out, to raise money and awareness for people living with homelessness.

Organised and run by the Newman Against Poverty group and the Equality and Diversity Team, the group spent the night ‘sleeping’ out in the College grounds. Supported by homelessness charity, Shelter, who came along to speak to our students about the work that the charity does and how our fundraising money would be spent. Shelter also talked about housing rights and the issues within the current law that they are campaigning to help change.

Our students arrived at 7.30pm, with their sleeping bags in tow, and after hearing from the representatives from Shelter, they took part in a range of activities relating to the pressures of affording to run a household, particularly with the current cost of living crisis.

They then spent the night under the stars in our gorgeous, but freezing grounds and even woke up to frost after getting an average of just 3.5 hours sleep each.

Calista Mullin, Assistant Head of Law who helped to organise the event said: “The students who took part were amazing and a credit to the College. A massive thank you to Kelly Illingworth-Turner, Bernice Taylor, Georgia Wright, Emma Watts, Ashely Hurst, Ian Bruce and Andrew Salter for their support and making what could have been an extremely stressful experience, an overwhelmingly positive one. Despite this, I can say with certainty that all those who took part will have been grateful for their own beds on Saturday evening.”

Despite these challenges, all students who took part managed to stay outside for the entire night and raised a fantastic total of £1700, which is still growing as donations continue to come in.

If anyone wishes to continue to support the sleep-out, the just giving link is still active:

https://www.justgiving.com/page/newmansleepout2024