Joe Roberts knows what it's like to hit rock bottom.
In 1989, the Barrie native was living under a bridge in Vancouver, a homeless teenager alone on the streets.
Roberts managed to transform his life and now lives to help other struggling young people and inspire change.
"I got a second chance at life," said Roberts. "I had really good family support, managed to go back to school and become successful in business. So this is my opportunity to pay it forward."
The former president of a multimedia company now heads up The Push For Change, a charity with a big goal and a huge journey ahead.
Roberts is going to push a shopping cart across Canada to raise awareness and dollars to support an end to youth homelessness.
"The shopping cart represents chronic homelessness, the thing we're trying to avoid for young people," said Roberts.
The Push For Change team gathered for a photo-shoot at the Spirit Catcher on Friday before making final preparations for the marathon.
Nathan Sykes, director of Youth Haven in Barrie, was on hand and applauded The Push For Change for starting a national conversation.
Youth Haven provides emergency shelter for people between 16 and 24 and is the only youth shelter in Simcoe County.
"From a grass roots, front line organization's perspective it can be really difficult to get the message out on a large scale about the causes and solutions to homelessness," said Sykes. "So for The Push For Change to go all the way across the country it has the ability to really unite people and bring the conversation on a much bigger level."
The 9,000 km trek will begin May 1 in St. John's and end around September 30, 2017 in Vancouver.
"It's going to take us 517 days, 17 months, one Canadian winter," said Roberts. "Twenty-four kilometres a day. Five days on two days off. One day off will be an engagement day."
The team will be participating in over 400 school and community events along the way.
Marie Roberts is the campaign director and also a Barrie native.
Marie and Joe were high school sweethearts who reconnected 28 years later and were married two weeks ago.
Money raised from The Push For Change initiative will go to Raising the Roof to fund the Upstream Project – a school based prevention framework to end youth homelessness.
