Gary

Gary suffered from agoraphobia and acute anxiety and had barely been able to leave his house for five years. His Occupational Therapist brought him along to a CCI project, building a garden for the Lanark Guildry. After a couple of days, one of the the volunteers from the Guildry asked Gary to go with him and pick up some plants in his trailer; Gary got in the car and left, leaving the OT dumbstruck. The gentleman from the Guildry had no idea of the significance of the event - he did not view Gary as a service user, patient or client, but as a 'helpful big guy'.

Gary has now joined a range of other groups and is actively seeking employment.

David

David is an autistic adult, he is non-verbal and finds communication very challenging. CCI was working on a project with Community Service Volunteers building a dry stane dyke. The CS lads were initially either patronising or hostile to David. However, after a few hours they had to recognise that David was a natural dyker and his skills massively outshone theirs.

Charlie

After a month coming to the project, Charlie identified that he was most interested in wood carving and furniture making for community environment projects. Unfortunately, Charlie was very over-weight and extremely shy, meaning he found it difficult to work for more than short periods of time, to take instruction in a group setting or to work as part of a team. His initial targets were his physical capacity and team-work skills. 18 months later, Charlie had lost 6 stones, was working four days a week in the workshop and mentored new volunteers. Recently, Charlie entered the world of work.