End Youth Homelessness launches hard-hitting poster campaign

Would you take a beating for a bed? WCRS’s poster campaign for End Youth Homelessness highlights the desperate situation facing young homeless people in the UK

For those of us lucky enough to have a home, it’s difficult to imagine having to steal, beg or harm yourself for a meal and a warm bed. But that’s the situation facing thousands of young people in the UK each night.

WCRS’s poster campaign for charity End Youth Homelessness highlights the desperate measures young people have been forced to take to find temporary shelter – such as committing a crime to land themselves in a police cell, self-harming to secure a bed in A&E and going home with a stranger.

Posters were created to promote the charity’s annual Sleep Out fundraiser. End Youth Homelessness is holding 15 Sleep Out events across the UK between November 2 and 24. Participants are asked to raise at least £200 in donations and sleep outside for one night with just a sleeping bag and a piece of cardboard. Around 2,300 people are expected to take part this year and the charity hopes to raise £1 million.

The poster campaign will appear in 164 sites across the UK and media space was donated by OOH agency Jack. The simple designs are hard to ignore and equally hard to forget. WCRS hopes it will make people stop and think what life must be like for the 83,000 young people who experience homelessness each year.

“When you make an ad to [help] get young people off the streets, it has to count,” says WCRS creative director Orlando Warner. “People have to notice. But more importantly they have to care. This campaign forces people to engage with the kinds of decisions young people on the streets have to make.”

See eyh.org.uk for details of Sleep Out events taking place across the UK.

Credits

Agency: WCRS Creative

Director: Orlando Warner

Creatives: Alison Steven, Liam Bushby

Designers: Lee Burns, Roland Williams @Trailer Park

Creative OOH agency: Jack