Emma
"Since we have been attending the Townsend Together programme a lot of our issues and parts of our lives have changed. Different people have not agreed with the course or its methods and some are just lazy and have dropped out. Those people haven’t really made much of a change to their lives. On the other hand those of us that are still here, still want to make a change and are still dedicated to the twelve month programme.
Progress so far is very varied in different people. Some have become more behaved, learnt how to deal with arguments and conflict and others may have built up more structure in their lives and developed an everyday routine.
From my perspective it is definitely positive progress. Natalie has got a new job and doesn’t waste time coming to the estate any more. This shows structure and maturity. Whereas I have been strongly concentrating on matters such as college courses, my music, creating lyrics and concentrating on agreeing to a new structure that has been given to me by my home. I haven’t bought drugs in about two weeks and before that I still started cutting down.
The Townsend Together Team tries to show us that motivation can create many good outcomes such as the new youth garden. But at the same time it doesn’t let somebody else push us to our goals; it allows us to recognise our errors and try to set them right by being more open minded about the situation at hand. The Life Coaches have been a great support and without these people helping us who knows where we would be or what we would be doing.
I believe that the next community project that we complete will be a great way to bring the community together again because at the last project we had everybody helping and we saw such positivity from the younger children especially".
