Around 100 people are to sleep in the grounds of the Lincoln cathedral to raise awareness and funding for homelessness.
Volunteers will be sleeping outside on the Deans Green from 7:00pm until 7:00am on Friday 7th March 2025.
The event, now in its 15th year, is held by YMCA and encourages participants to experience a night sleeping outdoors, in cardboard boxes, to better understand the challenges faced by those who are homeless.
Megan Panther, 22, a comms coordinator at YMCA Lincolnshire said: “While it is so important that we do this event to raise funds, I think sometimes awareness is even more important. I did it myself last year. You feel really guilty to be honest, because you’ve had it so you get to go home to your nice warm bed and you get to have a shower or a bath and you get to sleep for the rest of the day. But that’s just not the case for the people that actually are victims of homelessness, they have to do this every single night.”
She said: “The homeless community in Lincoln, sadly, is quite big and I think a lot of people walk through the High Street in town and see people on the streets and sometimes you’re not able to help them. You might want to help them, but you might not have the resources to help them, and that’s okay. But those people that might not be able to do that can attend our Sleep Easy and they can come and support the people that are at risk of homelessness in Lincoln in a different way.”
“People are completely wrong in making stereotypes and these people at risk of homelessness deserve the opportunity to belong, contribute and thrive just as much as anybody else. And that’s why it’s so important.” She said.
This event will provide awareness of homelessness and fight the stereotypes that people create around homelessness every day.
Matt Spray, 45, Supply Chain Supervisor at Spaldings, a company who have donated cardboard boxes to the Sleep Easy for around ten years and is also volunteering said: “it’ll be the sensation, the feeling of just being out, vulnerable and exposed in the outdoors as homeless people are nightly, and I mean, this is going to be a very sanitised version of sleeping rough. There’s no kidding about that. We’re not sleeping in the kind of potentially dangerous conditions that a lot of homeless people do. So, it’s very homeless like, but it will give us a valuable lesson, an indication of what a homeless person does experience.”
He said: “We want to raise awareness to take away the stigma that homeless people suffer under. Really, there are so many reasons that people become homeless. It’s not just a stereotype, addict or addiction situations. There are various reasons. So just the raising of awareness itself is a key part of the event I feel.”
“Well, if we show that we can do it, then hopefully next year it will inspire and motivate more people to take part. The more people that take part the more widely they are publicised. It just brings these events to a greater audience and increasing awareness is key.”
Other companies that have sponsored the Sleep easy include:
- Tesco, who have donated hotdogs and buns for the volunteers.
- Spalding’s, an agricultural distributor company in Lincoln, who have donated 75-100 cardboard boxes to sleep in this year.
- Stokes tea and coffee, who provide tea and coffee to participants.
- VIC group, who have donated things like flood lights.
