So I come from Manchester. I grew up here. 

 I fell into addiction when I was a young teenager, which was obviously quite difficult, and I had some mental health problems and stuff. I was in that situation for years and years. But then when I was like 21, I had something really bad happen. 

But that prompted me to want to turn my life around, so then I ended up moving away down South and I had friends who were squatting so I lived in a squat on the seafront. And it’s funny actually, squats have this bad rep, but that’s where I turned my life around ’cause they were like these straight edge squatters. 

So I went and lived in this squat and I got a job while I was squatting which was great ’cause I didn’t have to pay any rent and I was living in this nice little squat on the beach. We were like right at the beachfront so it was lovely. 

I wanted to come back to Manchester, Manchester is my home and it always draws me back. I just wanted to come home. 

So I came home, got a little KP job like chopping vegetables working like 50 hours a week and sofa surfing. But then I was like, do you know what I want to give something back? And it was really difficult actually. 

When it came to it, everyone I had known in my life since I was young was still in addiction. It was difficult ‘cause I wanted to help them. But if you’re that close to someone you can’t help them without getting hurt. So I thought oh, I’ll try doing some volunteering. And so I started volunteering on this Inspiring Change project. 

This was seven years ago now, doing peer mentoring with people, taking them to appointments, that kind of thing. ‘Cause I’ve been through those experiences it meant that people could relate to me. 

I ended up getting a Grow traineeship at Shelter, which is a job that you can get when you’ve had lived experience of homelessness, and they trained me up to be like a proper support worker. Actually it’s been a massive growth opportunity and it’s took, you know, it took years and years to kind of get to that point, but it’s like…it can happen. 

I think there were some really important people when I first started volunteering. I got this mentor, I was really shy and I think when I first walked in I would barely even talk. They just got me to sort out the paperwork, that was my job. I’d sort out the paperwork and do filing. So I was really shocked this guy kind of saw something in me and so he was like, right, you can come out with me, and I’ll show you how you do this. 

He trained me up to be a support worker, proper took me under his wing. He’d been through similar life experiences and I looked up to and respected him you know? Then through volunteering a few people started to have this belief in me. I don’t think I’d ever had belief in myself.

I needed them to believe in me to start to believe in myself. 

There’s something about giving people who are in challenging situations opportunities because I think that anyone can turn their life around when they’re in addiction or homelessness or offending behaviour. 

There’s a lack of opportunities for people who are in that situation so… I don’t know… I think I try my best to act as like a little bit of a stepping stone for people into that, and I feel like that personally, that’s my call to action. 

I want to reform the system. But then that’s such a big one that I’m like, what’s my little bit that I can do. And I feel like even if I support one or two people to develop a little bit, then it’s enough. 

Other people have done that for me and I want to do that for other people.