Hi, Simon here, I’m the Operations Manager at Justlife in Brighton and I’ve been reflecting on the first 7 years working in the city….
I remember really clearly our first day of Justlife in Brighton. Gary, Hannah and I set up the hall, put the food in the oven and then made our way across to the road to a large block of temporary accommodation. The steep steps up and the big black doors were intimidating. We knocked at the door and chatted to the caretaker who viewed us suspiciously, and gave a flyer to a lady coming back with her shopping. She said she'd love to come and would bring her friends.
30 minutes later and the lady arrived, good to her word, with two friends. We enjoyed a great lasagna and chatted about life in temporary accommodation, it’s ups and downs, mostly downs. And so began our 7 year adventure in the city trying our best to help people in that block and others, to help make their experience there be as short safe and health as possible. Trying to get more ups, than downs.
We are so proud of the work we have done over these past 7 years since that first lunch time drop-in session. We’ve had the privilege to work with and support hundreds of people, and see some brilliant changes in peoples lives. Not that it’s always easy of course, to be honest its more often hard work, and can be slow progress. We’ve been so fortunate to have such a great team of staff over the years that are caring and committed and they deserve the praise for the great stats and quotes presented here to celebrate the 7 years.
I’l leave you with one last quote from one of the people we supported; “Without Justlife I’d be dead. Simple as”.
