MIX Morning Show Host Jay Marchillo calls a night spent at the Downtown Mission in Windsor "an eye-opening experience."
Marchillo and co-host Morgan Ryan are the first media personalities in the city to sleep overnight at the mission alongside the agency's clientele, and Marchillo says at times, the experience was heartbreaking.
"People have their own preconceptions about what it means to be homeless, but there was one woman who was 76-years-old. She could be my grandma. She should be at home drinking tea, but instead, she's sleeping on a mat on the floor every night," he says.
The two radio hosts bunked down with about 40 of Windsor's homeless, many of whom are just regular folks who fell on hard times.
"We didn't want to do it as, you know, look at what we're doing, aren't we great," says Marchillo. "We just wanted to kinda get the experience and see what a lot of our neighbours are living through."
"We got our mats. We're lying down. We're going to sleep. We're getting up in the morning, and we know that six hours, eight hours later, we get to go home to our families and our showers and our nice warm beds," he says pressing that people need to be grateful for what they have.
The Downtown Mission plans to open a new facility on Ouellette Ave. soon, complete with showers and beds for clients.
Marchillo says the public can help by getting in touch with the staff to find out what they need.
However, serving up three meals a day means the mission can always use food donations.
"At Christmas time, it's full of food," says Marchillo referring to the mission's storage room. "Everybody at Christmas likes to help out -- but you know, what happens in April?"
