In search of altruIsm
W
A year on from
‘View From The
Coalface’ (DDN, April
2016, page 17), the
Mulberry Community
Project is still alive
and well and has
ambitions, says
Keith Stevenson
hen I started up the Mulberry Community
Project six years ago, people told me it
wouldn’t work. I approached the powers that
be and they told me that they had no money
to help us and that they didn’t understand the concept of
recovery houses.
Mulberry started with £250 in the bank and a lot of faith.
We had help from Green Pastures, our partners from
Southport who could see the vision, and support from the
church at All Hallows in Blackpool, which has been a lifeline
for us. We have seen other organisations come and go and
huge pots of money being used and abused by others trying
to do what we have done – helping people finding their road
to recovery and out of the chaos.
We’ve now had six years of building the programme and
working with people – some who wanted recovery and some
who just wanted a roof over their heads; six years of sending
people back into society to work, lead a productive
abstinence-based lifestyle and enjoy life. We still get phone
calls and visits from our past residents, and we catch up on
how well they are doing and what they are achieving.
However there is so much more we could do, by offering
work experience along with qualifications – so that when
people leave, their readiness for work is obvious. To achieve
this we need help. I have just been to the opening of a
fantastic project in Blackpool that helps young people with
terminal illness have holidays, and the vision and the dream is
breathtaking. It is easier to raise funds for a popular charity
like this than for one that helps recovering addicts; we are not
MEDIA SAVVY
have grown all too accustomed of
late. So while the MEN may
find itself criticised over
issues of consent for releasing
video of users stumbling
about like zombies or lying,
roaring, in catatonic poses, this
also feels very much like a
city’s cry for help.
Grace Dent, Independent,
10 April
FOOTAGE FILMED BY THE MANCHESTER
EVENING NEWS (MEN), and released this
weekend to social media, shows an
unsettling vision of a city centre flooded
by users of Spice. The effects of Spice are
distressing, at least to the unaccust om -
ed eyed – but the people of Manchester
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
IN LABELLING PEOPLE USING
SPICE AS ZOMBIES, the media
have allowed us to forget that
these are vulnerable people, who are
using a terrifyingly obliviating
substance to escape an unbearably
boring, painful or depressing reality.
They are not extras from a horror
movie, but people who need support.
Henry Fisher, Guardian, 20 April
‘we are not a “pretty”
charity, and I know we
are not alone in this.’
a ‘pretty’ charity, and I know we are not alone in this.
However we receive no funding from commissioners and we
have to rely on what we earn and what we raise.
This may sound silly, but I want people who could give
without expecting any return – to perhaps loan without
making a profit out of it. I want altruistic people who are
willing to be involved with helping people get back into
society. I want £50k so we can build a project that is going to
have a massive impact on people’s lives, and those around
them. We are a very small charity and that amount would be
massive to us.
I want to help those who may never have had work,
people who need training to expand their skills and who are
looking for independence from the state, and I know it can be
done. If there is anyone out there who has caught the vision,
please get in touch and let’s build something together to
enable people to live the dream.
Keith Stevenson is founder and CEO of the Mulberry
Community Project, www.mulberrycompro.co.uk
The news, and the skews, in the national media
ONE OF THE GENUINE PLEASURES of
life in the UK today is the daily parade
of photographs of zombified imbeciles
out of their boxes on synthetic
cannabinoids such as Spice. There was
a chap on Friday bent over double and
keening, in the manner of a
lobotomised baboon. Other photos
have shown users beating their heads
against concrete and, presumably,
incurring no mental damage whatso -
ever, or simply lying prostrate in the
middle of the road. The suggestion is
that we should be terribly worried
about this and do something about it. I
am not so sure. The photos are a source
of amusement, for a start, in a world
short of amusing things. And think of
what these people might be doing if
they weren’t rendered insentient and
thus harmless by these chemicals.
Rod Liddle, Sunday Times, 9 April
WE ARE SO AFRAID of the drugs
people take for fun, to feel good, or at
least to feel different for a few hours,
that we ban them almost reflexively
and punish those who use them.
Why? What’s so bad about adults
taking a vacation from the imperious
reality we call ‘normal’ – a reality
that, sorry to say, isn’t decreed by God
or nature but by culture, by a semi-
arbitrary history of conventions? We
should divert some of our hyped-up
fear of abuse potential into a societal
experiment, a sandbox, so to speak,
for exploring the benefits of various
popular drugs – drugs (such as
ketamine, marijuana, ecstasy and
psilocybin) that are illegal because
people sometimes want to take them.
Surprise, surprise: these drugs might
just help people feel better.
Marc Lewis, Guardian, 3 April
May 2017 | drinkanddrugsnews | 11