Before LWTT

Colin Duff was born and raised in Falkirk.

Colin left home & school at the same time and for a year after that was registered homeless, sleeping on the couches of friends and a few close relations.

As a single male he was not considered a priority for Council Housing.  Colin only ceased to be homeless when he obtained furnished accommodation from a private landlord.  Ironically this only served to further exclude him as the high rent charged meant that he was unlikely to ever obtain employment that would attract sufficient income to offset the loss of housing benefit it would trigger.  It also meant that he was considered to be adequately housed, and he lost many of the Council Housing points he had accumulated.

Colin remained unemployed until the age of 24 when he got married and subsequently held a series of short-term labouring jobs.

Colin’s first involvement with Community Education came about when he noticed a short article in the local free newspaper which sought volunteers for local youth clubs. Colin remembers “The article ended by stating that the youth clubs may have to close if no volunteers could be found and by asking people to telephone this thing called a Community Education Worker - whatever one of those was -  for an informal chat.”

The idea of volunteering for this attracted Colin, and he thought ‘It looked like fun, and I’m doing nothing else.’ With the encouragement of friends he called the Community Education Worker and a meeting was arranged for the following Monday. The meeting went well and Colin was asked if he could start volunteering at a Senior Youth Club the next Thursday.

This was Colin’s first experience of a working environment and although he found a lot of it confusing, he enjoyed the banter with the young people who attended. Soon he was asked to take on a second youth club and to help out with Under-18s discos.

Colin’s attendance at Youth Workers support meetings helped him to realise that there was more to youth work than ping-pong and tuck shops and he recalls struggling to understand what the Community Education Worker meant when they said that Youth Work was an educational activity.

Colin went to the public library and borrowed all the books on Youth Work that they had in their catalogue. He also volunteered to go on the Youth Work training course that the local Community Education Service provided. There he met Youth Workers from other areas and discovered that many of them were attempting to resolve the same questions that he was. Although Colin comments “In reality, my experience of the course simply pointed out more contradictions and raised more questions than it gave answers”, it did alert him to the fact that this was something that some people did for a living, not just a hobby!

Learning and Training at LWTT

Colin’s interest grew, but he hit a huge barrier when he learnt that a prerequisite of a fulltime job as Youth Worker was a degree level qualification. “At that time I had never entertained the notion of Higher Education before, and when I did I rapidly realised that geography, qualifications and finances all meant that I could not think of going to University” recalls Colin.

Fortunately, shortly after that, several people brought an advertisement in the same free newspaper for Trainee Community Workers to his attention. Colin was not sure what this really meant but felt he had nothing to lose, so applied for and obtained the post of Trainee Community Education Worker with Central Regional Council.

Colin laughs “I spent the first year keeping really quiet as I tried to figure out what this Linked Work & Training affair was all about. Once I felt I had a grasp though I wasn’t shy about speaking up in training sessions – and in the workplace.”

Colin feels that one of the formative experiences of his time at LWTT was his final placement with the Gorgie-Dalry Adult Learning Project. Colin learnt here that work with adults could be as rewarding and worthwhile as work with young people.

Life after LWTT

Shortly before completion of the course and on the strength of his experience gained whilst training, Colin obtained employment as Project Manager of a small voluntary sector youth project in Edinburgh. While there he was seconded back to build on his Adult Education skills as half-time course tutor with LWTT. Colin discovered that he really enjoyed this as the nature of the work there meant that he was able to develop a broader understanding of how national policy priorities were reshaping Community Education work. This was something he felt was important but that he had never had the time to do when running the youth project.

When Colin’s contract came to an end at the youth project he took the risk of going self-employed as a means of obtaining experience of a broad range of work in a short period of time. This was successful and he obtained contracts supporting community organisations on behalf of Alloa South & East SIP, providing training, setting up drugs services, and for a short period of time, for LWTT!