Respect

6 March 2020

Jack Clifton

Over the last few months at Streetlevel, I have seen our values demonstrated in a few different ways throughout the centres at Surry Hills and Waterloo.

One value that I often seen lived out by our community at Surry Hills is “Welcoming and Inviting everyone into our community”. Regularly I have been observing community members show compassion and helpfulness to new people coming in to the centre. Whether that is explaining how the centre works and what we have on or letting them know about services around the city. It is very encouraging to hear and see this being done and shows the hard work of the employees is rubbing off on our community.

Another value that has been a joy to observe has been the value of “respecting each other and their property”.
When I first started at Streetlevel, it appeared as this was a big sticking point with a fair few of the community members. Items had been lost/stolen, people were becoming agitated because of other people touching their stuff or getting in their personal space.
Over the last few months I’ve seen a change with some of the people that I have been observing. It has even manifested itself into people sharing items such as food, deodorants and other items. Overall though there has been love shown to each other as well as respect. 

I have done my best to show another set of our values by using encouragement and words of life with community members that I am seeing doing the correct thing and using the Streetlevel values.