Brave the BIG Sleep Out – Your Way and raise money for Rainbow Centre’s homeless work
Our BIG Sleep Out season runs from 1 December 25 until 28 February 26 alongside our Folkestone Churches Winter Shelter service, fundraising for our homeless work.
What is the BIG Sleep Out – Your Way?
The BIG Sleep Out is an event designed to help raise funds and awareness of homelessness in our community, it gives participants a small insight into the challenges faced by people that are homeless.
Participants are sponsored to brave the cold night by swapping their warm beds for a sleeping bag and a cardboard box. We’re asking you to join us and support more people like Alfie (read his story below), to have a place to call home, by hosting your own BIG Sleep Out event for Rainbow Centre.
It’s done Your Way – you decide whether to sleep out with Friends, family, your church group, scouts, gym friends, whoever you want! You choose the place, the date and the time of your event, so you can make it unique to your group, you can have a competition for the best shelter, have a quiz, or do anything else you decide, as long as your participants get sponsorship the rest is up to you.
How do we start?
Start by letting us know that you will be doing a BIG Sleep Out by downloading and completing our form sending it to events@rainbow-centre.org and we will send you everything else you need to have a fun and safe event.
Alfie’s Journey
Alfie lost the caravan he was living in and all his possessions and ended up sleeping rough on the streets of our district. He is 65 years old and became depressed and found it hard to cope. Once he found the Rainbow Centre, he could take a shower, get some fresh clothes, and have breakfast in the day centre each weekday. It was a relief to him that someone cared and despite sleeping rough each night in terrible weather he knew he had somewhere to go in the daytime.
In November 2023 he was given a place in our Winter Shelter, where he had a bed and a cooked meal every night while he worked with the staff on finding accommodation. He was accepted into a sheltered housing scheme, and the team helped access grants for furniture and kitchen items to start him off in his new tenancy. We are now providing ongoing tenancy sustainment for Alfie to ensure he can manage his new home.