Inside a community hall in Bridgend are a group of men using martial arts to try and turn their lives around. Founded in November 2021 by Cardiff-born Rob Green, Fighting Homelessness CIC is a not-for-profit organisation that helps people going through homelessness by providing them with martial arts training sessions. These sessions aim to equip individuals with a support mechanism they may need to keep going, in often extremely hard circumstances.
Supported by The National Lottery, Fighting Homelessness has helped individuals across Wales since its inception in Cardiff three years ago, with programmes now being offered in Bridgend, Pontypridd, Merthyr, Swansea, Bangor and Rhyl. In Bridgend, one of the young men who is taking part in the sessions said they had given him a "purpose".
Cameron, 23, from Morriston, found himself homeless after he was evicted from a property he was renting. While suffering with poor mental health, he explained that he had let the property go into "disarray".
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He is currently living in supported accommodation, but was struggling before he started attending the Fighting Homelessness martial arts sessions. Cameron said that he was spending most of his days "bumming around, doing nothing" and smoking cannabis.
"I was waiting for a programme like this to come along to be honest. I had a little bit of a history with boxing, but since becoming homeless I've had no outlet whatsoever. So being able to come into the group, it's amazing.
"I wasn't doing anything in my own time before coming here. But this has given me a direction. It's something to wake up for, twice a week. It's boosted my confidence and opened my eyes to see what else is out there, rather than being so closed-minded.
"I was very pessimistic about my situation. Every day I was down and depressed so this has given me something I needed. It forces you to go out of your comfort zone." For the latest Bridgend news, sign up to our newsletter here
Fighting Homelessness was born out of Rob's passion for martial arts and support work. Rob's father was a karate instructor, so martial arts has always been something that's played a big role in his life.
After leaving school after getting his GCSEs, Rob began on a Prince's Trust programme, where his love of support work flourished. Throughout his twenties he worked in various roles before eventually becoming involved with homelessness through a job at a local authority, which was where the idea for Fighting Homelessness came from.
He said: "One of my cases came up to me and spoke about how he'd got involved in boxing. That's when it clicked about uniting my two passions, which is martial arts and support work. From having that conversation, I developed a system of using combat sports as a support mechanism, rather than chasing medals.
"Fighting Homelessness is all about using the hidden support within combat sports to help a person overcome the challenges faced with homelessness. Originally it started out as a programme within a local authority, but the demand since has made us into a not-for-profit, supported by The National Lottery."
This emphasis put on the hidden support that martial arts provides to the participants means that the project goes beyond just teaching martial arts skills. Instead, it creates a mechanism to help the participant overcome their problems without having a more traditional therapy session. They have also started working in schools and prisons.
Rob said: "There's things that we embed within the training, for example resistance exercises where the person has to move their fist around with a bit of resistance with another person, that have been recommended by psychologists for overcoming trauma by building that physical connection with the body.
"There's lots of hidden support mechanisms within the martial arts. Our participants are able to get support without calling it support, they're overcoming trauma without calling it trauma, they're tackling addiction without talking about addiction. It's the hidden support that is unique."
It is not just Cameron that the project has helped; everybody who is employed in Rob's team are former participants. Rob explained that not only does this help participants as they can relate to the team members, but the very fact they are called team members, rather than "officer" which is often used in support work, also builds a level of trust.
He said: "Listening to participants, that level of authority that comes with the term officer can often be a barrier, and we want to get rid of that. This even goes down to the fact that everyone who is with us is called a participant, not a service user because of the connotations that can have. It's positive language, and shows them that they are part of something."
One of these team members is 31-year-old Aled Miles-Yates, who was shadowing Rob at the Bridgend sessions before taking up his new role. He said the "vital" sessions had helped to bring him out of a "dark mental place" he was stuck in.
Aled found himself in trouble back in 2017 when he was gambling while he was in a job he wasn't happy in. He also was taking painkillers for a knee injury, but started taking more and more as his mental health deteriorated. In order to fund his gambling addiction, he stole some money from work and ended up receiving a suspended prison sentence.
"My life was at the bottom," he said. However, after being involved in numerous projects, including at The Wallich, Aled was introduced to Rob and took up the opportunity to get involved with the Fighting Homelessness sessions. He is now looking forward to turning his life around with his new role in Rob's team.
"I'm over the moon, I'm beaming. I'm not just living for my two sons anymore, I'm living for another purpose. I'm doing a job that I will love and it's just going to be up from here. It's given me my life back. Fighting Homelessness has given me more than they realise. Rob hates talking about himself but he has given me my life back."
Similarly, David 'Dai' John, 45, is another one of the team members working with Rob that has come through the project himself. Dai, 45, became involved in the project a few years ago after struggling with addiction in his thirties.
He was in treatment with a recovery provider when he met Rob and Kornelijus, one of Fighting Homelessness' instructors, and decided to give it a go. He said: "I threw myself into martial arts and started doing it 16 hours a week.
"I just absolutely loved it really. It's given me everything - confidence, friends, self-belief. It gave me a purpose in life and got me mentally tough and in a good place."
Dai was the first student of leading instructor for Fighting Homelessness Kornelijus Sabaliauskas, who began volunteering for Fighting Homelessness to try and give back to the community that had helped him. He remembers the difference the sessions made to Dai's confidence: "When I first met Dai, he sat four chairs away from me. He was shy, he didn't want to speak to me but he eventually started to open up more. I see it with all the guys. Everyone starts off quiet but now we all catch up after classes."
Dai also elaborated on what he has seen the project do for people like him: "I've seen the project help people with very little confidence and self-belief who are in bad places. It's given them confidence and made them all round better people.
"I think sometimes life can back you into a corner and I think things like this, if you give it everything you've got, it can build you up to be strong mentally, and if you can be strong mentally, strong physically with a good heart and a good purpose then we've got a golden ticket to thrive in this world."
Rob agreed that when participants throw themselves into the project, it can support those with addictions or reoffending behaviours to overcome them. He said: "The discipline martial arts instils is amazing. We've had a lot of people come to us with reoffending behaviours but then they get so gripped to the sport. Sometimes, it does become a matter of replacing one addiction with another.
"They become so obsessed with the training and the gym and become so passionate about it that they forget about the addictions and trauma, just focusing on their love of martial arts."
One particular story that stands out to Rob from his time running Fighting Homelessness was of a young man who was stopped from going down a dangerous path after getting involved in the sessions. Rob recalled: "One young man, his whole family were in prison when I'd met him and another family member had overdosed from drugs.
"He was potentially entering this cycle but through coming with us, he's gone in a completely different direction. He's involved in combat sports now, he's got his own house, he's got a child on the way and is very settled. For me, it's knowing that Fighting Homelessness has changed that generational cycle."
"When I set up Fighting Homelessness, I wasn't in it for the big stats or the awards, it was just cool to know that something I'd created was changing a person's life in that way. That's what it's all about for me." As well as this passion for being part of people's stories, Rob added that as a single dad to his son Tommy, he wants to work as hard as possible to make him proud.
Rob still has lots of goals for Fighting Homelessness. He has hopes of taking the project across the border into England and also hopes to set up his own supported accommodation which can help the provide the participants with the support they need. He explained: "What we've been seeing, and this is no disrespect to any supported accommodations as we understand the challenges they have, is that after building such a positive mindset within the participants, they go back to negative spaces where people are still using drugs, still being violent.
"There are just huge triggers for them. By having our own supported accommodation for people who train with us, they can continue that ongoing support by going to accommodation where other people are trying to do the same as they are."