OTTAWA- There are an estimated 65,000 homeless youth in Canada and that number is growing according to program Operation Come Home.

From 4:00pm on Friday to 4:00 on Saturday, Algonquin College students will be panhandling at Minto Park to help raise funds for the program, which assists homeless youth.

The students are also raising awareness with their camp out which requires them to sleep on cardboard boxes, without access to any technology or other forms of entertainment.

“My night was very cold I came unprepared no sleeping bag I wanted to doit like a real homeless man and it was very difficult will admit it,” said Jonathan Thompson.

Some of the students were bundles up in coats, toques and sleeping bags, but one young man said he wanted to get the full experience and forwent the sleeping bag.

“Doing it for more than a day I can’t even imagine it, especially 365 days a year,” said student Andrea LeBlanc. “As the weather gets colder and it starts snowing and stuff like that, I don’t know how people survive doing it.”

Another girl said sleep was hard to come by during the ’24 Hours of Homelessness’ while another student brought along their guitar to try and raise more money for Operation Come Home and its partner programs, including Job Action Centre, the Rogers Achievement Centre and more.

One of the students actually spent the night on a couch in the park the group found while others had trouble sleeping some getting less than four hours.

“I actually fell asleep panhandling,” said LeBlanc. “I got a little bit of sleep, not the best sleep for sure. I woke up feeling really groggy and not good.”

Last year, the students raised $3,500 panhandling.

“These people need the money, they need the shelter, they need the food because they’ve got nothing, said Gemma Paquet. “They don’t have a lot of stuff to survive on so just doing this can help someone stay alive.”