Cardboard City: Life outside the box

I guess you could say I’m an average teenager. I’ve got a laptop, an iPod, a cell phone, and a seemingly omnipresent link to the Internet. So living in a cardboard box for 15 hours with the wind blowing and rain pouring down on you, with only the ring of boxes inhabited with others just as cold and defenseless against the elements to keep you company, is kind of a change. Yet there I was, trying to sleep with a half-inch layer of cardboard and a plastic tarp between myself and the damp grass of the fairgrounds.

Why would I turn my back to the chatting online with friends across the globe, blasting zombies and making fortresses in outer space, and universal control over the environment I’m most comfortable in? Because a year ago, I was introduced to Family Promise Mat-Su’s Cardboard City program.

For one night, residents from all across the Valley put aside their pagers and plasma TVs, and picked up cardboard boxes, blue tarps, and duct tape. The program put on each year raises awareness of the homeless in the Valley, without a house or shelter to go to. All around the green gate of the fairgrounds where Cardboard City takes up, Family Promise puts up notes about the homeless, and how they live in the community.

Each of these provides a reminder to what the money raised is going towards, and the people who will benefit the most from the donations and pledges. It is easy to forget about what you’re doing there at times, because of the positive attitude and community-minded individuals that set up around you, each trying to make that one night better than the reality that, “Wow, I’m sleeping in a cardboard box!”

And while there’s fun, live music, and contests for the best box designs, looking at the city we’ve put up for one night out of the year, you have to think about who lives like this the other 364 days of the year. Recognizing just how many people here in our own Valley live like this every day, year after year, really puts it into perspective for you: Our neighbors need our help.

Zachary Boyden

Palmer