Students at Shawnee State University collected 3,105 non-perishable food and personal care items, and more than $450 in donations during the Shantytown event April 13-15.

Shantytown is an annual community service event on campus in which students build their own cardboard dwellings and sleep in them for two nights to get a taste of what it is like to be homeless. In addition to raising awareness of the problem of homelessness, participants collect donations of money, food and toiletries that are donated to a local charitable organization that works with the homeless and those living in dire poverty.

“They did great,” said Jodi Stanley of Potter’s House Ministries, the organization that received the donations from this year’s event. “We are grateful for their efforts.”

Participants are only supposed to eat what is donated to them in the way of prepared food during the three-day project. Stanley said she visited the students who participated in this year’s Shantytown to bring them sandwiches. She found their gratitude touching.

“It was a good experience for me, too,” she said.

Stanley described how some of the participants tried various things to get donations. The Greek organizations made a competition of trying to get the most donations.

“Some students were hula hooping for a dollar. There was a guy with a big horn that he was playing for donations,” she said.