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Shopping cart journey raises awareness about youth homelessness

Joe Roberts brought his Push for Change campaign through Nanaimo on Monday (Sept. 11)
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Joe Roberts brings his Push for Change campaign to Cedar Community Secondary School on Monday (Sept. 11). (Photo submitted)

An advocate who wants to end youth homelessness made a push for his cause in Nanaimo.

Joe Roberts, who has almost finished pushing a shopping cart all the way across the country, shared his message Monday (Sept. 11) with students and politicians.

Roberts was at Cedar Community Secondary School in the morning, and later stopped by the City of Nanaimo’s service and resource centre to talk with city councillors and members of the affordable housing strategy steering committee, the community vitality committee, the homeless coalition and the Nanaimo Youth Advisory Council.

Roberts moved away from home when he was 15 year old, got into drugs and was at one point living under a bridge and on the streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside before his mother bought him a plane ticket back home to Ontario and he was able to start anew.

Roberts’s current journey is 17 months long, and he is walking 24 kilometres every day, 9,000km in total. He will arrive at his final destination, Vancouver, on Sept. 30.

For more information about his Push for Change campaign, visit www.thepushforchange.com.

-files from the Vernon Morning Star