EJ. Borg celebrated his 16th birthday a few months ago. But he didn’t have a party and he didn’t receive any gifts. Instead, the Granite Bay resident decided to spend the day with the homeless in Friendship Park in Sacramento.

Borg is a junior at Jesuit High School in Sacramento and part of the school’s curriculum requires students to complete 16 hours devoted to Christian service. Jesuit offers a number of programs in which students can participate and the one Borg selected was called “the plunge,” which immerses students for 24 hours in a controlled environment where they act as a homeless person.

The plunge is associated with Loaves & Fishes, a private charity organization that feeds the hungry and shelters the homeless in Sacramento’s downtown area.

“You have to be selected to be in this program,” Borg said. “There were 20 applications and five were selected.”

Borg said his experience began on a Friday afternoon when he and the few other Jesuit students arrived at Loaves & Fishes. First there was a tour of Quinn Cottages, a transitional housing facility located adjacent to Loaves & Fishes. Borg said he was introduced to several of the Cottages’ residents, who can stay at the facility while trying to get their lives together after being down usually from drugs and alcohol. Before bedding down for the night Borg said he and his fellow plunge participants heard a variety of stories about the plight of the homeless.

“That really opened my mind,” Borg said. “Many homeless people are people who have lost their jobs and had bad things happen to them in life.”

For the weekend, Borg slept in the park with a sleeping bag on the grass. He and the other students were watched over by security guards and Borg said he wasn’t afraid, just a bit bored. After all, there were no cell phones, TV or iPods.

The next day, Borg said they were awakened at 5 a.m. and told to leave the park. The boys grabbed their sleeping bags and found a place on the sidewalk to continue sleeping a few more hours. Upon waking because the noise from so many people out on the streets was so loud, Borg began to eat breakfast, which consisted of a two cookies and a pastry.

“When I noticed a hair in the pastry, I didn’t want to eat anymore,” he said.

At 7 a.m. Friendship Park opened and Borg was given his ticket for lunch.

“They only give out so many tickets and the homeless get in line early in the morning to make sure they get a ticket,” he said.

Borg said he was given a list of things he could do for the day and one was to visit the nearby library. Upon arriving at around 10 a.m. he noticed many homeless asleep throughout the building.

“I started reading about the stock market,” Borg said. “I felt a little out of place.”

At about 11:45 a.m. the library closed and Borg said he found a park bench. A volleyball game was going on and he was asked to play.

“These homeless guys welcomed me with open arms to play,” he said. “There weren’t really any rules and no one was really that good of a player but that didn’t matter.”

Soon it was time for lunch and Borg got in line with the rest of the homeless with his lunch ticket. The meal consisted of rice and beans and according to Borg, some kind of “mystery meat.”

After lunch it was back to the bench where Borg took a nap. Friendship Park closes at 3 p.m. each day and Borg said he noticed what a mess the entire park was after all the homeless had left for the day.

“The place was a real mess,” he said. “There were so many cigarette butts and the whole place was overwhelming filled with trash,” he said.

At this point, Borg and his fellow students, from whom he was separated for most of the weekend, went on a walk with some of the Jesuit teachers and program directors. Each student was given a challenge. Borg’s was to try to find somewhere that would allow him to use their restrooms. After being rejected at a convenience store, Borg entered a Washington Mutual bank office where he was allowed to use the facilities after talking financial facts with one of the staff members.

Throughout the entire 24 hours, Borg said he was surprised at the number of homeless people there are in the downtown Sacramento area. He said his compassion for the plight of the homeless has grown. After spending the night outside in the park and being extremely cold all night, Borg said he learned what things in life are important and that the bit of discomfort he experienced doesn’t matter.

Borg’s mother, Sandra, said she is proud of her son for wanting to spend his birthday in such a way, but admits she was frightened.

“I worried about him,” she said. “I knew it was a controlled environment but I was still scared. When he came home he said he really appreciated everything his father and I do for him.”