The Swampscott Yacht Club’s fifth annual Polar Bear Plunge at Fisherman’s Beach had more than 250 registered plungers this year, a record turnout, and what was certainly the largest crowd yet of friends, family members and just plain spectators.

Indeed, there were so many registered plungers, so more T-shirts have been ordered and are on the way.

The New Year's Day event benefits different charities each year with all of the proceeds going to the charities, thanks to a group of dedicated volunteers led by Jill Hartmann.

“The plunge was a smashing success,” said Hartmann. “So far (as of Monday morning) we have raised over $20,000! With lots of outstanding IOUs, I am hoping to reach 25K.”

The 2011 Plunge will benefit the Maureen Ingram Scholarship Fund, created to honor the memory of a beloved Swampscott elementary school teacher who died in 2010, and Journeys of Hope, a charity founded by Andy Acampora of Swampscott to help the estimated 990 homeless young adults, ages 18-23, on the North Shore “move from a homeless lifestyle to one of sustained shelter though a productive lifestyle,” in the group’s words.

Journeys of Hope now has a permanent day program in Lynn that offers individual counseling and workshops.

“It was a great day,” Hartmann said. “I call it the perfect storm of fundraisers … perfect balmy weather, the tide was right, the causes were close to the heart, and everyone was in the mood for some fun!”

More often than you might think, a good high school student — or maybe a not-so-good student — wakes up one day and decides to chuck it.

If he or she is 18, there’s nothing Mom and Dad can do as that student walks out the door and begins a new life on the streets, homeless and jobless. It won’t be long until he or she is in a shelter, given the New England weather.

Sometimes, that person is then booted out of the shelter to fend off hunger and cold on the streets of Lynn, Salem, Beverly or some other North Shore town.

It happens here, says Andy Acampora of Swampscott, who has joined several others in forming a brand new organization called “Journeys of Hope” that hopes to address the problem in several ways.

Acampora, who works at Osram Sylvania in Beverly and is a permanent deacon at St. John the Evangelist Church in Swampscott, knows from personal experience that our story about a kid waking up one day and becoming homeless by choice is not fiction. Not a bit.

“I saw this happen, a guy who left home on his 18th birthday, and I went on the Internet to find some information,” Acampora says. “I quickly learned that this is a huge problem.”

He says that young people, like older homeless people, go to shelters sometimes, but the shelters are really geared to people with more life experience.

“People from 16 to their early 20s, they don’t have that life experience and they’re not used to living by rules and regulations. Some of them come from foster care, and the shelter is also a big change,” Acampora says.

That’s because homeless shelters do indeed have rules and regulations, from leaving the place entirely during the day to being asked — required, really — to help out by sweeping the floor, unloading groceries or whatever other jobs might be needed at the shelter.

“Responsibility is new for some,” Acampora suggests. “And they don’t want it, so they get kicked out of shelters.”

For others, called “throwaway youth,” a stark term for young people ordered out of their family homes by their parents, discovery that shelters have rules and regulations comes as a shock. It’s also a reminder of the home they left.

“Once I realized this was happening on the North Shore,” Acampora says, “I started looking at area programs, starting with Bridge Over Troubled Waters in Boston, and I realized there was nothing at all for people in the younger age group on the North Shore.”

Acampora contacted friends in search of support, beginning with John Doherty and Chuck Marcou, both from Swampscott and then Tom Rogers, a lawyer from Swampscott who said that the first step is to become incorporated, however formal that might seem.

Then he found more friends to be on the board of the new organization, by now named “Journeys of Hope,” friends like Pam Tracey of Beverly, an attorney who works at Osram Sylvania, then adding Joseph Karaman and Michelle Phippen of Beverly.

“At that point, we sort of had a Swampscott group and a Beverly group,” Acampora recalls. The two groups met together with Sheila Moore of Bridge Over Troubled Waters on Jan. 11 this year to see how they could address two issues: housing and programs to encourage a productive lifestyle.

“She told us we needed to narrow our focus, that as a start-up, we were trying to take on too much,” Acampora says. “She said we should try to start with a day program and then work out some kind of cooperative effort with existing shelters, who would send younger people to the Journeys of Hope day program.”

That should work, Acampora says, because many shelters require clients to be off the premises from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. or so.

But aren’t young homeless people suspicious of program to “help” them?

“That’s why there needs to be a low-barrier entrance policy,” he explains, “but the goal is to build a trusting relationship between a homeless young person and a staff member, over time. But until the young people raise the issue, there should be no pressure.”

Acampora envisions a day program that includes breakfast and lunch for homeless young people, each of whom will be assigned to a care worker as a pre-requisite. Before they enter the program, the only requirement will be that while they are on Journeys of Hope premises, they will not use alcohol or any other drugs.

The day center will include washing machines and showers, he says.

“You need to understand that laundry is a big issue for homeless people of every age,” he says.

Acampora says the vision is modeled after Bridge Over Troubled Waters, which provided shelter for more than 5,000 homeless young people last year.

Once a young person shows interest, Journeys hope to offer counseling, GED (high school diploma) help and, often most importantly, substance abuse counseling.

Toward that end, Acampora has enlisted Dr. Herbert C. Hagele Jr., a physician who lives in Lynnfield, as well as two more board members, Pierre Erhard and Janet Merrill, both of Wenham.

Journeys plans to start with people 18 to 23 years old, largely because dealing with people younger than 18 can and sometimes does cause legal problems.

Youth homelessness is not an urban problem, nor a problem seen only in low-income areas, Acampora stresses, again citing his own experience.

“It’s not limited by economic status, neighborhoods or education,” he says, “nor is it greater in any specific community.”

However, he adds, the most likely places for a day center are in Greater Lynn or Greater Salem.

Journeys of Hope is now a federally approved non-profit corporation, approved July 11, and will soon begin fundraising, Acampora says, including applying for federal grants.

“We have the hardest-working board I’ve ever seen. They’re all professionals with full-time careers. I have no idea how they find time to work this hard (for Journeys of Hope),” he says.

Down the road, the local group may even be able to copy Bridge Over Troubled Waters in having a medical van that can travel the North Shore, giving medical assistance to homeless folks “and anyone who shows up,” Acampora says.

Acampora notes that Journeys is not affiliated with any other organization or group, religious or otherwise.

Acampora says Journeys of Hope welcomes interest from people who want to join the group as anything from board members to volunteers. Information and a statistical summary of the youth homelessness problem are at www.journeysofhopema.org.