To Give or Not to Give
Thursday, March 4th, 2010WORDS//Corinne Scoltand
IMAGES//James Adabie
You’re walking down the street, minding your own business, wondering what’s for dinner tonight. Then out of the corner of your eye you see him. He’s wearing layers of crumpled up clothing, smelling like he hasn’t showered in weeks, holding a plastic cup and begging passers-by for change. What do you do? The tight cynic in you says no way, “he’ll only spend it on drugs and booze…” Enter Good Conscience: “Maybe he is genuine; maybe he really doesn’t have any food, and needs a few pennies to get by tonight. If I don’t spare my change, who will?” You walk on by with mixed emotions.
Most Londoners prefer giving to charities to dealing personally with homeless people on the street. But, if beggars weren’t there to remind us of their presence (and more often than not to make us squirm) would we just forget that homelessness even existed?
Monday 26th October, 12pm
I find myself sitting in a sophisticated, top-notch café near to Spitalfields market in East London where the majority of London’s homeless population live. I’m sipping a fabulous creamy hot chocolate. There are beautiful photos on all walls of the café – arty, bright, inspiring images – and I wonder who they are by. Then my eyes are drawn to the endless line of customers laughing and chatting as they wait to order their lunch. I poke my head round the corner of the kitchen door and quietly snap a picture of the chefs busy at work, seriously arranging salmon and cress sandwiches on a silver platter.
By any reasonable standards one would think I was indulging in a top quality café for lunch. But I am in the midst of some seriously transformed human lives. All the staff who are serving customers, cleaning tables and preparing food were once either homeless or in prison. All the photos and paintings dotted around the building are taken by homeless people seeking to acquire new skills so that they can re-enter the workplace and all the profits from this café go directly back into the homeless charity Crisis.
Jo Taylor has been managing Skylight for two years and is incredibly passionate about what she does. “Essentially the good vibes in this place are all about getting homeless people and ex-offenders back on their feet so they can face the world outside” she says excitedly.
But Skylight is more than just a café; it offers a variety of skills-based lessons and opportunities. Homeless people and ex-offenders can be part of cookery, photography or arts based lessons or woodwork and technology workshops. Jo guides me through the hidden spaces of the building. Upstairs is the ‘learning zone’ where showers and space for socializing are available. Downstairs is the café.
Every chef, waitress, waiter, counter assistant, comes to training sessions two or three days a week and the other days, they work and learn on the job. In between all of that they sleep out on the streets. But between them all business is run as usual. No-one could guess that this café is a thriving social enterprise.
Skylight works in partnership with Switchback, who mentor young offenders in prisons around the country. They refer young people- between the ages of 18 – 24 to Skylight for training from those who have been in prison for three months or longer and shown significant improvement in that time.
“By giving homeless and ex-offenders a real focus, that requires dedication, commitment and hard work, we help them to detach from old habits and to understand their own potential to succeed,” says Jo.
Is it really that easy? “Of course, not everyone who comes in to the café is responsive to what we offer” Jo admits. “Many people who start here are still struggling with their own personal chaos and frantic lifestyles.”
Alice Dawnay, a mentor at Switchback, shed some more light on the difficulty of their work. “The good work we do in prisons with young offenders is often lost when people are released. The structured, institutional prison environment often leaves people at a loss when they get out into the real world.
“Regardless of the structure in the Skylight café it remains difficult for many ex-offenders to cope with change. Neither Switchback nor Skylight can force people to change – people have to make choices to help themselves and then we have a part to play.”
Alice tells me that on average around 5 out of 16 referrals Switchback gives return to prison within the year.
“Sometimes it will take people a few shots at getting back into work and normal life” Alice explains. “This year we have seen three people come out of prison, go to the café, go back into prison, then come back to the café. The process is not so simple that the first time they get out of prison and go to the café, they live happily ever after.”
Despite the challenges, within a year Skylight sees on average twenty people of those who come through its doors get back into work and about six people a year enter further education.
The team are more excited than normal this year because since July seven trainees have progressed into further education and nine have moved on to work. They have achieved in six months what was previously done in an entire year.
The Success Story
MARK KING is 21, from East London.
“I lived a young life of crime, alcohol and drugs until I was about 17,” Mark tells me as we sit in the lounge area of Skylight Café. “In the end I wound up in Rochester Prison.”
“I always thought I would be a success no matter what I did. I thought I was invincible or something.”
It’s almost a clichéd story “I was angry and depressed and full of hatred for many many reasons when I was growing up. Then I made some bad choices, took some wrong turns, and stuff just sort of just happened without me thinking about it.”
After 2 months ‘inside’ for crimes that shall remain nameless, the so-called Young Offender came across Switchback mentor Alice Dawnay. With her “charm and genuine care”, Alice made Mark think seriously about his aspirations for the future.
“She asked me to imagine I had a clean slate and could start again. All my life I had always had this weird appreciation for food and so the answer was all of a sudden obvious – I wanted to be a chef.”
Alice contacted the Skylight Café to refer the Young Offender as a trainee chef. Within days of serving his time in prison, Mark was learning the methods of gutting fish and scrubbing pans. “On my first day at Skylight I was pretty nervous but more than that I was really determined not to let myself down again – not to slip back into old habits. I knew I mustn’t screw it up this time.”
Mark now attends Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s
We finish our drinks and I watch Mark for a while chatting to the new people in the kitchen. With everything he has been through he seems wise beyond his years, with a desire to help others in the position he was once in.
River Cottage in Devon where he is completing a cooking traineeship. He still comes back to Skylight, to visit those who got him back on his feet. “They are like my family here” he admits.
To donate towards helping Crisis tackle homelessness please go to www.crisis.org.uk. If you know someone who could benefit from training at the Skylight Cafe please contact Jo Taylor by email at joanna.taylor@crisis.org.uk
