Story
Celebrate the beautiful game with the team you're missing most this summer.
Grab your mates or colleagues, and virtually travel 555 miles to all the current Scottish Premiership stadiums and back home to Pittodrie.
Walk, run or cycle, log your miles together, and help show homelessness the red card.
Home/Away is a great way to get moving inside or outside, whenever you are able to, over the next few months.
Every mile your team travels will help fund our frontline services supporting people who are homeless, without a fixed address, in crisis or suffering with addiction and mental health challenges.
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Aberdeen Cyrenians has been tackling homelessness for over 50 years.
Starting life as a soup kitchen organised by Aberdeen University students, we now provide support and assistance to anyone expereincing crisis and at risk of losing their home.
Through our community projects and residential services in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, we help rough sleepers, couch surfers with no permanent address, people who struggle to maintain a tenancy due to mental health and addiction issues, ex-prisoners with nowhere to go and those who flee from danger.
We reach out a hand to people like Simon who have stumbled in life and help get back on their feet practically, emotionally and socially.
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When Simon lost his job, he started drinking and his mental health took a dark turn. Battling his increasing alcohol dependency, he began to fall behind on his rent payments.
Simon knew he needed to find a new job quickly, but his addiction and mental health issues were making searching and applying for a new position more and more difficult. When Simon became homeless, he turned to Aberdeen Cyrenians for help.
Our support practitioners helped Simon apply for universal credit and access temporary accomodation from the council. They also referred him to Street Alternatives - our hot meals service - which provided him with a hot, three course meal four times a week, and access to shower and laundry facilities. At Street Alternatives, Simon also joined our music group, and found that singing with others helped still his troubled thoughts.
We lisitened to Simon.He could talk about his troubles for as long as he needed.With our support, he began to acknowledge that he was suffering with addiction, anxiety and depression.
His support practitioner arranged a GP appoitnment for him, and travelled with him to the appointment. He was prescribed some medication, and his support worker helped him take his prescription to the pharmacy and set up a repeat prescription.
Getting help from Aberdeen Cyrenians has been life-changing for me. When I first came to them, I was drained, tired and felt like giving up. They really inspired me to make changes.
Simon was drinking less, but was still strugling to get his addiction under control.He was worried that he would spend all his benefits on alcohol.His support worker referred him to the city's Integrated Alcohol Service so he could get the help he needed.
When we found Simon a new, permanent home, he admitted to his support worker that he found the evenings lonely. He didn't like spending time on his own, and sturggled to find things to do to fill the day.He worried that he would slip backwards into depresson.His support worker helped him to go along to some local groups, and meet people and have fun.
Simon has now been living on his own for a year and a half. He now has a full-time job. He still sees his support worker - but only once every few months. He talks and they listen.
I'm slowly moving forward, working hard, and I now have a full-tme job. You've made a positive mark in my life and I will never forget you.
To find out more about Aberdeen Cyrenians, click here; and for more information about our COVID-19 repsonse, follow this link.