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This a story about my journey to MOVE ON. When I was young I always wanted to be a soldier like my uncle and serve my country. My time with the army didn’t work out how I planned it so I ended up leaving under bad circumstances. I soon realised I didn’t know what I wanted from my life and started to isolate myself from my friends and family thinking that everyone was against me and having really negative thoughts about myself which led to my confidence dropping to the ground and I couldn’t seem to pick it back up. My mood started to get very low and felt upset about the way my life was turning out so I started using cannabis and alcohol to deal with my feelings. It got to a point where I could not leave my room or be in a social setting without having bad anxiety attacks which made me feel really irritable. My irritability built up over time until I ended up getting into trouble with the police which led to me becoming homeless.
I had hit rock bottom and couldn’t see a way out until my social worker told me about an organisation called Venture Trust. They have a “Chance for Change” programme that takes people who have offended out into the Scottish Highlands on a 10 day personal development course and helps them clear their head and set goals to be achieved when I returned home. When I completed the course I felt like a new man and knew that I wanted to work with vulnerable people suffering from homelessness or other social problems and that I could use my own experiences to help them not make the same mistakes that I did. I started doing group talks for Venture Trust about their programmes, to future participants about any questions or worries they had about the course, which I really enjoyed doing.
Soon after my worker PR told me about an organisation called MOVE ON and told me that it matched the job that I wanted to do so I looked up some info about MOVE ON and soon realised that it was the place for me. 2 days after me sending in my application I got an interview then 2 days after that I got offered a place as a trainee development worker in a paid post and I couldn’t believe it I was so happy to be given this amazing opportunity to help people. I love my job and everyone I work with are really nice and amazing people. It is a really good working environment and the job that MOVE ON does is truly amazing and is inspiring to how committed the organisation is to changing the lives and unlocking the potential of vulnerable people.