By Erick Weber | Correspondent

You lose a job. You get sick. Your relationship falls apart. A natural disaster ruins your home. You may be alone or have a family – kids, a pet or three. Staying with family or friends may not be an option. What do you do?

That’s the question organizers from St. Mary Parish, Barnegat, and Family Promise of Southern Ocean County hope youth and families learned during the annual Cardboard Box City event, held overnight April 27 at St. Mary of the Parish Church, Manahawkin.

“[Youth] have no clue about homelessness in this area, because they don’t visually see it,” said Alicia Bruno, parish youth ministry coordinator. “I have a very soft spot for homelessness because I experienced it a little bit – my kids were young; my daughter was like 2, my son, 6. We were living on a tugboat in Jersey City, trying to fix it up. My husband did underwater repairs and was fixing the whole boat, [but] we were taking on some water and it ended up being bigger damage than we thought, so we had to leave.”

“It was like leaving your house because it was on fire, but instead of fire, it’s water,” she continued, noting that luckily a parish nearby had a convent and took them in for a while. “Your home is where your family is, but when you don’t have a place, you have this feeling of insecurity, lack of self worth; you go down.”

Youth and families from St. Mary Parish joined their counterparts from area churches of different denominations, gathering supplies to create cardboard boxes to sleep in for the night as well as learn more about the social services system. Money raised as part of the fundraising component was donated to Family Promise, a nonprofit that works to reduce homelessness and empower families to be self-sufficient in southern Ocean County. 

As the moon began to rise, parish youth ministry members Alex Panichella, 15, and Eric Garvey, 17, worked in the chilly night air of the damp parking lot near the church, constructing both cardboard box dwellings and a tent in which to sleep. Of all the challenges associated with experiencing this small piece of homelessness, they said, possibly the most basic – finding the materials to construct their shelters – was the most difficult.

“I talked to everybody, and they were like, ‘Sorry, as soon as we get [the cardboard boxes], we crush it,” said Panichella, noting that they finally found boxes they could use at local stores.

Both expressed hope that more youth would become aware of the challenges facing homeless individuals and families, particularly the fact that children are often blameless victims of the condition.

“Homelessness can happen to anybody,” said Elizabeth Golla, executive director of Family Promise of Southern Ocean County, which also held several “game” stations in the parish hall to help the dozens of families participating further understand the frustration of trying to find aid.

Volunteers staffed about seven stations, each representing an institution such as social services, churches, counselors, schools, pet shelters and more in which the homeless interact. The stations were based on real-life scenarios experienced by families that have been helped by Family Promise.

For example, one station had parish families jumping through hula hoops to explain the back-and-forth homeless families face when it comes to social services. “A lot of kids [playing the game] can’t believe that they got turned down – can’t believe that they made too much money so they couldn’t get help,” Golla said.

Susan Raylman, a parish catechist who also works with homeless students as an area school counselor, agreed.

“[The kids] get frustrated within five minutes standing on line at social services, and they’re like, ‘They forgot to stamp our paper. How come they forgot?’ And that’s really what happens,” she said. “We have families that are affected in our own school district, and people tend to think, ‘It’s not here; it’s not in Ocean County; it’s not in our community,’ and the reality is, it is.”

Bruno noted that youth and families learning about homelessness ties in with the Corporal Works of Mercy, saying that youth staying overnight “start realizing what’s really important.”

Msgr. Kenard Tuzeneu, parish pastor, said he hopes the teens and families “get just a little bit of the taste of what it might be like for somebody who doesn’t actually have a home.”