Winter doesn’t want to let up quite yet but that didn’t stop Bishop Stang High School students from rallying against homelessness.

Cardboard Tent City is one of Bishop Stang’s many annual community service events. Led by French teacher Jackie McCarthy in its 11th year, more than fifty students joined in on Saturday, April 2 to raise money and understand the plight of the homeless.

Though the event typically takes place outside, due to extremely inclement weather, students camped out overnight in the Bishop Stang gymnasium which was packed with sleeping bags, blankets, and ragged cardboard boxes to sleep in.

Students and faculty were joined by guests who have been homeless or work with the homeless. Miguel Araujo shared his story of drug addiction and homelessness. Though Araujo had a house, two kids and a fiancee, he was also an alcoholic.

Alcohol soon became painkillers after he broke his foot, and painkillers became heroin when he no longer had the money to support his habit.

“Enough was never enough,” he said.

Araujo eventually found himself jumping between homelessness and jail. He didn’t find out for quite some time that he had mental health issues that exacerbated his situation.

It wasn’t until he met Karen Ready from Catholic Social Services that the tides began to change. He was homeless and in dire need of a place to stay so Ready had him placed in jail to keep a roof over his head.

“I couldn’t believe it it. She had me put in jail,” Araujo joked.

However, he was able to pick his life up and has been sober for two years.

“[Karen] has saved so many people,” said guest Rev. David Lima of New Bedford.

Lima strives not just to end homelessness but to inspire empathy for homeless people.

“We drive by them, we question them, we tell ourselves they made their own choices,” Lima said. “Some people just plain suffer without anything in hand.”

He told students of a real-life cardboard ten city in New Bedford that communities of homeless people create made of mattresses, tarps and anything else they could scrounge up.

Lima was deeply inspired by Stang’s annual event so much that, to “shame” local politicians into taking action against the rising number of homeless people, he started a cardboard tent city event in New Bedford. City counselors, bank executives, business owners, local elected officials, and even Representative Tony Cabral participated in the event.

The $16,000 raised is being put toward creating a homeless shelter staffed by social workers who can evaluate the people they serve and begin working on a way to get them off the streets permanently.

“It’s not a New Bedford problem,” Lima reminded students. “It’s a problem in every big city.”

McCarthy credits Ready with saving his and many other lives of homeless people throughout the South Coast. Ready is the Program Director at the Sister Rose House, a men’s sober house and also oversees the newly-reopened St. Hedwig’s House for the homeless.

Students have been very sympathetic to the cause, as is evidenced by the large turnout and the number of recurring students year after year. The students raised $1,600 to put toward the Sister Rose House and St. Hedwig’s.

McCarthy said that students are so involved that one student put out a jar at work and donated everything she collected, totalling at more than $300.

“Don’t judge anybody,” McCarthy said to students. “Listen to their story and learn from them.”