By Victoria Barbatelli
In less than 10 minutes, three
undergrads from the Auraria campus handed out 50 blankets at Denver's
Civic Center on Tuesday for National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness
week.
Members of the CoPIRG student action group — Hillary Ahern, 20;
Kristin Pyles, 19; and Kyle Brown, 19 — coordinated a two-week coin
drive on their campus that raked in $275 to purchase blankets for the
homeless.
They raised more than three times the expected amount, Pyles said, maybe thanks to the weather.
"Especially with all this snow, people tend to sympathize; people like to support," she said.
A man who rifled through the plastic bags of $5 Wal-Mart blankets
said he was trying to pick out the perfect color for his wife. "When
you're married, it's important to look out for the other," he said.
More than 11,000 people are homeless in Denver this year, according to a survey by the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative.
Roughly 2,000 of them eat and sleep on the streets, said Mike McManus, outreach worker at Colorado Coalition for the Homeless.
"A blanket can literally make the difference between life and death," McManus said. "It's kindness, human to human."
