TO celebrate the Year of Young People, every week in 2018 The National is giving a platform to a young Scot. This week, 24-year-old Lorna Ferguson, social impact administrator for Social Bite Fund

SCOTLAND; a place of innovation, bringing the world the telephone, television, penicillin and Harry Potter, and also a place of imagining and re-imagining what is possible and what could be. This is exactly what Social Bite is doing, believing that ending homelessness in this nation is possible and is worth working tirelessly towards; re-imagining how we can each play our part in doing this.

This week marks the launch of the Social Bite Village, a project that combines a pioneering housing model, using vacant council-owned land, with a supported community environment. This will be home for 12-18 months to 20 people who are currently trapped in the temporary accommodation cycle. The project is entirely geared at breaking the cycle of homelessness and giving residents pathways into employment and permanent housing, restoring hope and confidence. It has been an utter privilege for me to play a small part in the Village team, liaising with partners and the build team.

The first residents will be moving in to this community in the next month. It will be an incredible place of discovering and rediscovering themselves, what they enjoy, what they are good at, what their hopes and dreams are, a place where confidence and skills will grow and be nurtured, where people can reach their potential – a place of kinship.

You see, I have a possibly audacious belief that everyone holds the power to change the world, and this project has reminded me of this in the way hundreds of individuals and organisations have done what they can with what they have, whether that has been skills, time, money or resources. People have believed they have something to offer and that change is in fact possible. Change is possible – in fact it is probable – and it is coming. Homelessness is climbing the political agenda, people are raising their voices and believing in a Scotland where everyone has the opportunity to flourish and reach their potential.

I am all too familiar with the feeling of being utterly overwhelmed by the realities that so many of those in our nation face.

The problems seem too deep, too institutionalised. It is hard to meet people, hear stories and statistics and not be moved. But it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, and think “I am just one person”, “I don’t have much money”, “I don’t have the skills”, “how can I make a difference?”.

These are the thoughts that infiltrate our minds, the thoughts that tell us to live in an element of ignorance, the thoughts that tell us to turn off the news because it’s too sad, to look the other way, to stay in our bubble of relative comfort, but no, the truth remains – ignorance is not bliss, knowledge is power.

Change is possible, it is coming, and you are invited to join the movement.

We need only look at the Social Bite Village, a site of disused council land that, through vision and the generosity of many, has become a beautiful community of transformation.