On February 5th, Sister Jean Moylan attended the 7th annual fundraiser breakfast for YOU (Youth Opportunities Unlimited) along with over six-hundred Londoners. During the proceedings, Heykel Kader was recognized and received warm applause for his Christmas-time fundraising initiative for YOU – a local agency that offers housing, training and support to troubled youth. Heykel raises money and awareness for the Raising the Roof campaign through the sale of toques. The blog below is the result of Heykel’s telephone conversation with Mary Kosta, our archivist about his unique fundraising activity – spending Dec. 20-29th living homeless on London’s winter streets.
Before Christmas, Heykel Kader saw people running around buying presents and it all seemed meaningless to him. He decided to spend from December 20th to the 29th living on the streets of London, spending Christmas with people who had no one, connecting with them to share their loneliness and isolation. YOU volunteers met up with Heykel several times during the week to sell toques. He raised awareness of the plight of the homeless by keeping a diary on the social media site Twitter.
Heykel set some ground rules for his week living homeless. He would not stay in shelters or eat at soup kitchens unless he could exchange his labour in return. He would not panhandle, and would not ask his friends for help. He locked the door of his apartment, and began life on the street with a backpack and a sleeping bag. He spent his days looking for food and places to volunteer, and his nights sleeping in covered entrances, garages, and under bridges. During the day, he warmed up in malls, coffee shops and public libraries.
Heykel found a group called People Helping People which supported people living with mental illness and addictions. These people lived together and pooled their welfare cheques. He noticed that they had poor nutrition, slept a lot because of their medications, and were not getting the support they needed to stay healthy. He cleaned for them in exchange for dinner. He met a girl whose father had raped her mother. Her mother was in jail when she gave birth. The girl grew up never knowing her father who went to prison for murder. Her mother took crack and prostituted her. This girl now lives on the street.
Heykel dropped by the men’s mission and found people who were angry, sad and frustrated. He learned that people need to be both able and willing to change their lives, but for many people these key factors were missing because of mental or physical illness or negative thinking. This puts them in a self-sabotaging cycle, unable to see value in themselves. Heykel understood how easy it is to become negative. He was dirty and gave up on cleaning himself because even if he washed, his clothes remained filthy. His self-esteem started to diminish quickly. He knew that it would be easy to drink or take drugs to feel better since at night bars were often the only places open to stay warm. It would be easy to fall into addiction when feeling lonely, abandoned, isolated and cold.
After a while on the street, Heykel found it difficult to look at people because he was so dirty. He saw that homeless people try not to appear homeless and often blend into the background. On the day of a big snowstorm, he walked from the Fanshawe area to the train station downtown, but found it closed. He walked all night, stopping to get warm at 24 hour fast food restaurants. He was exhausted, with sore hips, cold and starving. By now, all he could think about was his own survival. He found that with no one to talk to and no one turn to, he played mind games. He began to understand how homelessness can trigger mental illness.
Heykel met many people who were homeless during his sojourn. One couple, a man and his wife were living in a shelter because they lost their home when their bills piled up after his surgery. Another woman lost everything she owned, including her home, because of a Money Mart loan. He saw that job loss can lead to homelessness.
Heykel took away many lessons from living on the street over Christmas. He learned that people who are homeless for a long time lack basic life skills like budgeting, and that we cannot expect them to be able to change their lives quickly. Change is a long process that requires patience and faith. The homeless person needs to form his or her own idea of what to do to change the situation, and we can only support them. As Heykel said “The seed can be sown, and if enough people are out there sowing seeds, there can be change.” He feels that there need to be more places that offer individual or group counselling and job skills training. He noted that there are many places that provide food and that there seem to be enough shelter beds. One place in particular that offered excellent support was the London Community Health Centre in the east end where he was able to shower, wash his clothes, eat and sleep for a while.
Heykel concluded that support, love, encouragement, and people who want the homeless to succeed as well as the resources to help are needed. The reasons for homelessness go deep, including the high jobless rate, people trying to live on social assistance and not managing, and people whose employment insurance runs out before they find work. We need to address the systemic roots of homelessness, and offer ourselves as friends to the homeless, as Heykel did over the Christmas season.
With thanks to Sister Jean Moylan for the introduction, Mary Kosta for doing the interview and especially to Heykel Kader for sharing his incredible venture with us.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013 at 11:04AM 
