Noel's Story

I grew up in the ripples of the heroin epidemic, and my family got swept up by it. My dad had become a full-blown addict and it seemed like overnight we were all thrown into homelessness.
Before we were homeless, things had gotten abusive at home. Every penny that came into the house went into my dad’s drug problem and he had become violent. My mum couldn’t do anything about it. We were all starving. My dad had cut us off from the rest of our family, so they had no idea what was going on – we had to put up a facade and pretend things were fine. We had to hide it from everyone.
Eventually we escaped and got into a homeless shelter away from my dad, but that wasn’t the end of things.
We were in a crisis homeless unit for about 8 months and after that we changed addresses more than 10 times. This was because my dad was on sort of an abusive trail to try and find us again, so it was about staying safe. When he caught up with us we would have to move fast, dead sudden. We had to get away from him. We’d leave in the middle of the night to escape.

Eventually we had to go back to the homeless shelter. Things weren’t going well. We went into care. So me and my siblings got split up into different groups. We barely saw each other and when we did we all only had an hour to catch up. It was emotionally exhausting. We were in care for about two and a half years before me and all my siblings ended up home with my mum again. I was in early secondary school when it happened. 

And I haven’t even mentioned school until now. Through all of this I was supposed to be showing up all the time getting grades. How? The only reason I showed up to school was to be fed and feel a bit safer. I was going but I was tuning out. Absolutely tuning out. It was still rocky at home.

Because of everything happening at home, I could not concentrate in school at all. I tried. As time passed it became harder to catch up. I knew I was 3 years behind Maths and English as my little sister was doing my homework. By then my mum was unwell a lot. She wanted help but she was incapable of it because of her health issues. We’d all been raising ourselves throughout our life anyway, so it didn’t feel like a big deal anymore.

It was also in my 3rd year of high school that I had my first interaction with MCR Pathways. In our school there was a small office. That’s where the MCR person was. In the mornings she would, I guess, ‘scout out’ who wasn’t looking okay and who wasn’t coming in on time. I’d be late most days and my uniforms were all old and aged. I was bullied for that actually. She noticed me and she started to talk to me. I must have looked like someone who might need help. So she started talking to me, and I talked back. We talked a lot and it became part of my week, another reason to go to school. I didn’t know what mentoring was but sharing what I was going through felt good.

After a while she worked out I liked Design & Technology, and that’s when I learned about ‘Talent Tasters’, skill workshops that MCR Pathways run as part of their programme. I loved it. It was so immersive. It was the only time I wasn’t thinking about what I was going through outside of school. I could just create and make stuff. And it wasn’t just the construction part, it was through that programme that I met my best friend, someone with similar interests to me. It was a great experience, it really helped me.

The more I thought about construction, the more I started to think of different avenues where I could get involved. It was that little hook that kept me on at school, without it or MCR Pathways I would have left and got nothing. But instead, my mentor helped me deal with everything I hated or thought I was bad at. Even if I didn’t like maths, I knew they were skills I would need to do what I wanted. I started to engage more because I could see my future clearly. I wanted more for myself. By the time my first big exams came around, I had nearly caught up in my education with the other young people my age. I actually caught up really fast once I had that encouragement from MCR. I just needed a little support.

But not long after things were picking, up there were still problems at home. We had a fire in the house. When that happened, I had been writing my portfolio essays for English. That had gone up in flames too. So, I tried to plagiarise something and handed it in. That was a mistake, obviously. I got in trouble. It was an important lesson for me to learn though. I actually hadn’t told anyone about the fire – when they asked me and I explained, there was more leniency and understanding about what I did. 

Problems didn’t stop but that one got sorted, I got back into the hard work of it all and was still doing the construction stuff as part of MCR Pathways. I went from being years behind my peers to thriving once I had set goals and that extra push from MCR. It got me into college, and then into university, and it’s brilliant where my life is now. I have a job in construction design, which is a dream come true. I’ve also been back to the homeless shelter we lived in – it’s a vacant building now. It’s a wild perspective to walk through it and see it as just an empty space instead of this place where I had so much fear.

People don’t realise when they are signing up just how influential they can be with MCR Pathways. You may think you’re just going there and only helping your young person in school. But whatever happens, what you tell them and what you help them with – that will stick with them for their entire life. The wee bits you chat about in that friendship, helping to build ‘MCR’ in them… helping to build that foundation… it sticks with them. Recognising what’s happened and charging on. All through my life there’s been that rollercoaster.

I was helped to accept what happened to me, but also to recognise that I was never my surroundings. Whatever happens you don’t have to give into it. You are your own person and it’s about that resilience, carrying on. Get the most of what you think, what you want to do. It’s hard to verbalise. I think that’s what mentoring helps young people realise.

Mentoring is a challenge, but my achievements are your reward. It’s worth it.

Could you mentor someone like me?