The fourth annual Camp Out to End Youth Homelessness held last Friday night was a bittersweet success for A Way Home Kamloops despite raising more than double the original $50,000 goal.

Appearing on the NL Morning News, A Way Home Kamloops President, Louise Richards, says after the death of the organization’s founder, Katherine McParland, the camp out was something they could rally around.

“It has been a difficult week. The camp out was something for all of us to focus on and kind of come together around that enterprise and then the response of the community was just like, amazing,” she said.

“Nobody expected anything like we were able to achieve so a thank you to everyone out there.”

Richards says A Way Home Kamloops plans to carry the momentum they’ve built forward, calling it their number one goal.

“We’re totally committed to ending youth homelessness, it was Katherine’s passion but certainly there is a good group of capable staff and the board, we’re all in agreement with that mission so we are able to carry on, regroup and look at how we’re going to do that and what projects we’ll be looking to add to the ones that we already have underway,” she said.

Richards says the $108,000 that has been raised so far will raised will go to several areas within the organization, noting there is nothing specific that has been planned just yet.

“We are always looking to increase the housing options that we have for youth so that is where that money will go but as for ‘this is what we’re actually going to do tomorrow with that money’, we don’t have that exact plan in place at the moment,” Richards added.

The goal of A Way Home Kamloops, she says, hasn’t really changed, noting there are always challenges.

“One of the things we’ve always been working on, and Katherine of course took the lead and identified this, is getting the different parties working together,” she said.

“There are different ministries and organizations that will have a piece of the youth homelessness trajectory and what we’ve always tried to do is get a coherent and coordinated support system behind the youth so that kind of work will continue.”

When asked if some of the $108,000 could go to buying cheap hotel space as temporary housing, Richards says, “there always need to be a range of housing options, there isn’t one particular type of housing that’s ever going to solve the problems so hotel housing is one of the pieces of the pie but it can’t be the only one.”