Ealing’s youth mayor, Tejas Dattani, and members of Ealing Youth Action, slept rough outside Ealing Town Hall last week to raise awareness of youth homelessness.

On Wednesday, October 29, the youngsters, all aged between 15 and 16 years old, also raised £600 for the YMCA after sleeping through the night in makeshift shelters made out of cardboard boxes.

Taking part were Sunny Hassan, 15, Tejas Dattani, 16, Umra Butt, 16, Keyuri Dattani, 15, Isaac Lillington, 16, and Izaaz Syed, 15.

Tejas said: “The last youth mayor focused on homelessness in London and so I wanted to carry on publicising the issue. After doing some research I found out that there is a lot of youth homelessness in the capital which I find horrendous in this day and age. Although we don’t have youth homelessness in Ealing we are still a part of a city in which this happens all too often.

“The best way for me to learn about homelessness was to experience it for myself. I was able to get a group together so we set up outside Ealing Town Hall at 8pm on October 29. We made makeshift shelters out of cardboard boxes and we wore at least four or five layers of clothing. It rained until 9pm which was miserable but then luckily it stopped. It got really cold around 2-3am so we were glad of our layers and sleeping bags, which a lot of homeless people do not have.

“Some of the youngsters slept but I couldn’t. I felt too vulnerable. A homeless man approached us at one point during the night and said that it just get worse. We offered him some food which he didn’t take before he went on his way. Doing something like this defeats all the stereotypes you may have about the homeless. More needs to be done.

“I never walk past a homeless person now. Giving some of your spare change to someone is not about the money. It’s about the gesture of help. And it can make a homeless persons day just to not have been ignored.”

For more information on the Youth Mayor, Ealing Youth Action and Ealing Youth Council, go to www.youngealing.co.uk.

Donations can still be made by going to the group’s Just Giving page: https://www.justgiving.com/EYAmembers1/