Helen Mirren, Will Smith and Brian Cox Camp at “World’s Big Sleep Out”

An international event called the “World’s Big Sleep Out” has people camping out in sleeping bags to help raise cash for homeless causes – with celebrities participating in the fight against the growing global homelessness.

Oscar-winning British actor Helen Mirren is among those who took part in the symbolic sleep-out event organized by Scottish social enterprise Social Bite, along with the likes of Hollywood stars Will Smith and Brian Cox as well as around 50,000 people across over 50 cities from New York to Dehli.

“The line between having a home and homelessness for many families is so thin,” said Mirren, before reading a ‘bedtime story’ in London’s Trafalgar Square in England, where 2,000 people settled in orange sleeping bags.

Mirren added that she hoped to help make people feel less “helpless” through raising awareness of the global crisis.