For the fifth year in a row, DuPage County young adults will transform their yards into homeless shelters during "Sleep Out Saturday," a fund-raiser Nov. 1 seeking to serve as a "wake-up call" for homelessness.

More than 1,500 teens and adults will spend the night outside in tents, boxes or cars to raise money for Bridge Communities, an organization that provides shelters for homeless families in DuPage County. The all-night event will be held in backyards, parking lots and parks and includes 75 groups of youths and young adults.

Today, more than 121,000 DuPage County residents are one paycheck away from being homeless and 45,000 DuPage residents live in poverty. The average age of a homeless person in DuPage County is 8. Researchers estimate that 7.7 percent of youth experience homelessness at some point during their life.

Although DuPage County has the second-highest median income in the Chicago area, it has more low-income people than the total population of 87 counties in Illinois. In fiscal year 2007, 32,631 people, or 10,502 households, received emergency assistance in the form of housing, food, clothing, prescriptions or transportation.

The Nov. 1 event will kick off with a rally from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the parking lot at Bridge Communities, 505 Crescent Blvd., Glen Ellyn. The rally will feature celebrity emcee Rob Johnson, CBS 2 anchor/reporter, entertainment and testimonials from formerly homeless individuals. Sleep Out Saturday's sponsors are Central DuPage Hospital, Harris Bank, Icon Digital Design, Directions Training and Monarch Landing.

Last year's event raised more than $110,000 for Bridge Communities' programs for the homeless in DuPage County. This year, Bridge hopes to raise $135,000 in order to promote its mission to connect homeless families to a brighter future.

“When people think of homeless, they usually think of the guy sitting on a bench by the train station,” says Bridge Communities co-founder Bob Wahlgren. “This image is of the visible homeless.

“Our program serves the people you don't see – the invisible homeless, single parents with children. When I learned about children being homeless in DuPage County, I was shocked and knew that we as a community could do more to help these kids. Some of our families were living in Laundromats, cars, and one family was living in a tent in a corn field.”

Celebrating its 20th anniversary, Bridge Communities serves more than 100 families annually in its transitional housing and shared-equity homeownership programs. Through the transitional housing program, each family is paired with a faith-based or community-based organization that provides a mentor team and a $10,000 annual commitment to sharing the cost of the family's housing and services.

Founded in 1988, Bridge Communities offers mentoring, career coaching and counseling, job training, tutoring and transportation.

For information on the Sleep Out Saturday Rally, to participate or to sponsor a “sleeper,” call (630) 545-0610 or go to www.sleepoutsaturday.org.