Features / Interviews
Bristol Homeless Week: Cycling to employment
Bristol Homelessness Week has been set up to raise awareness of homelessness, those at risk of becoming homeless and the issues facing rough sleepers. A number of organisations, including Julian House which runs a bike workshop for people to learn new skills, are opening their doors this week to show how they support the city’s homeless.
“We offer the first steps towards employment,” says Simon Brand, area manager for Julian House Bike Workshop, based at Junction 3 just off the M32.
“Many of the people we work with are homeless, have substance abuse, are long-term unemployed or are former offenders,” said Simon.
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“Some of them have a lot going on in their lives and learning to make a regular commitment and turn-up regularly and on time can be challenging.”
To help them build the skills needed for future employment Julian House runs Build-a-Bike workshops.
Attendees are given a second-hand bike and, over six weeks, learn how to strip it down and refurbish it. When it is back together, they receive a certificate of attendance and the bike itself.
Julian House runs the courses in Bath, Trowbidge, Bristol and recently opened a workshop in Erlestoke Prison.
24-year-old Jake Butler recently completed one of the Build-a-Bike courses and said he “really enjoyed the course”.
“We had to dismantle the bikes and then put them back together using parts at the bike workshop and it provided me with great experience and some useful new skills.”
The Build-a-Bike course is designed to give people new skills and a taste of employment. Once they’ve completed it “the barrier to employment is not then as high as it once was,” says Simon.
Simon Brand is the manager for Julian House which runs the Bike Workshop and Aspire programmes in Bristol
The workshop is part of a wider programme offered by Julian House to get some of Bristol’s most vulnerable people into accommodation and employment.
The charity also runs a new programme called Aspire in Barton Hill, which will focus on practical employment skills in building and construction, CV writing and confidence building.
If you are aware of a person that is rough sleeping, please contact Streetlink by clicking here. A member of their team will make contact with the person to help them into emergency short stay accommodation.