Will you spend Just One Night?
IMPORTANT UPDATE: Due to the issues surrounding the covid-19 virus, the park event for Just One Night has been cancelled for 2020, unfortunately. Safety of our fundraisers and other participants is very important to us. For that reason, we do ask people and/or businesses to consider sponsorship. At a time when most of us are sheltering in our homes, homeless LGBTQ+ youth are almost doubly at risk. It’s important we continue to fundraise for them. The night of May 16th, Sister Dottie will be posting to the facebook page a link to watch him live stream playing a series of scary video games for your amusement and hopefully donations. So keep an eye out there!
Current estimates are that, on any given night, there are approximately 1.3 million homeless youth living unsupervised on the streets, in abandoned buildings, with friends or with strangers. Homeless youth are at a higher risk for physical abuse, sexual exploitation, mental health disabilities, substance abuse, and death. It is estimated that 5,000 unaccompanied youth die each year as a result of assault, illness, or suicide. Additionally, estimates are that 40% of these youth are LGBTQIA+.
Just One Night is a fundraiser that seeks to raise funds for organizations doing critical work with our homeless youth in the San Antonio area: Thrive Youth Center, that seeks to provide a much needed safe space for LGBTQIA+ youth to find their footing and get off the streets and Stand Up For Kids who do critical work in street outreach, apartment support, and mentoring of these kids.
Getting involved is simple: Commit to spending one night sleeping in the rough so that a teen may not have to. Register for this site, create your campaign, and set a fund raising goal. This will create your profile page that your friends, family, and co-workers can then use to donate to your fund raising efforts. On May 16th, 2020, we’ll have the big event at Maverick Park. All our fundraisers gathered together, sleeping bags in hand, to try to draw awareness to the plight of homeless youth and to the organizations working on their behalf.
As a homeless LGBTQIA+ teen myself, many years ago, I can personally testify to the fact that lives can be changed completely by the actions of the right person at the right time. The only reason this homeless high school drop out was able to get off the streets, get my GED, and get into college is because good people took a chance on someone they could have just as easily looked the other way on.
I know first hand that teens on the streets are faced with choices that no kid should ever have to make. Please help these organizations do the work of changing lives and outcomes for these kids.
If you have any questions about the event, the sign up process, or about the organizations… please do not hesitate to reach out to me by email.
If you would like to donate directly to the fundraiser, you can do that in the menu to the right.
Hope to see you May 16th!
— Sister Dottie Bair 💙