Last Friday, three of the Firefly team slept outside in a park. No, this wasn’t a vastly over-running planning session or pitch preparation. Instead, we were delighted to join the Action for Children team and many, many others in raising money to help end youth homeless at Byte Night 2016.

Funnily enough, the Firefly team first supported Byte Night fourteen years ago in 2002 during its fifth year. Back then, Byte Night raised £300,000 – today, it happens at eleven different sites around the UK and last year, raised a staggering £1.1m.

We’ve have been honoured to help with media relations for Byte Night this year, working to raise awareness amongst the technology community, who have long been staunch supporters of the cause.

Never ones to turn away from an adventure, we also took the plunge and joined the rest of the London team sleeping in St John’s Churchyard near London Bridge. We arrived at the offices of Norton Rose Fulbright, event sponsors, at 7pm for a drink, a hearty dinner, light entertainment from former Starsailor lead James Walsh, a raffle, quiz and speeches from Action for Children staff and beneficiaries.

But the main event came quickly enough and we trouped outside with some trepidation, hoping for a dry night.

And it was – until a light shower at 5am provided a wake-up call. We were all pretty uncomfortable but well wrapped and warm, thanks to a few last-minute sleeping bag purchases – and of course it was well worth it for such a worthy cause. As we sloped back to our warm beds and showers, the importance of helping to eradicate youth homelessness was very much at the forefront of our minds.

We’d love to do support the event again, and in case you haven’t seen our page, there’s still time to donate – we’d really appreciate it if you could donate a few pounds on our JustGiving page here.