Social Auxilliary Worker - Fiona Swartz

Hi,

My name is Fiona Swartz. I've been a client at Streetscapes, a project of Khulisa Social Solutions NPO for 5 years. When I joined the project, I had been on the street for 10 years and I had a big problem with substance abuse.

I had no job and did not think that I had any future, because I lived from day to day on the street, trying to survive. I thought that I would just spiral down and down because I knew that I did not have the strength to beat my addictions.

I then made the big decision to join Streetscapes to turn my life around.

At Streetscapes, I immediately started working to get myself out of the curse of addiction and also enrolled myself in skills development programs to learn the essential skills I needed to be a valuable, contributing member of society. 

I joined harm reduction programs that assisted me with overcoming my substance abuse issues. While the programs gave me the framework, it was up to me to do the hard work of reducing and eventually coming off all substances. I realised that I now had the means to overcome and pre...