Connecting the Dots...with a guy making massive impact (Beau Haywood)

This episode features Beau, the founder of Nourish Street, who shares his transformative journey from battling addiction to leading a community project that feeds hundreds of homeless individuals weekly. Discover the power of community support and how Beau's initiative is changing lives in our local area.

Transcript

Speaker 4: 0:00

My life in weeks, week 23, since I turned 49, and I do this little project every week where I connect with somebody that I find fascinating or interesting or special. And this is somebody I don't know. I've never met him. I started following what he was doing online and went. He's making some real impact in our local community. He's doing great work. I want to know more about what he's doing, why he's doing it, and how we can help. So check out this guy making some real impact and helping those in need around us. I was really taken by his story. And if you connect with any of the things that he needs help with, if you can help him, I'll make sure everything's linked. So, week 23 of me connecting with people doing special things. And this is certainly a guy doing special things from a special place.

Speaker 3: 0:50

This

Speaker: 0:51

is Bo. This is the first time we've met and, you're somebody I started following Well, your passion project online and from there I sort of started reading some of your posts and I went, I want to know more. So let's start with, I would normally say what you do, but I want to start with your passion project. So tell me about Nourish Street and we'll go from there.

Speaker 3: 1:13

Alright, so Nourish Street is a family initiative that myself, my partner and my three sons started. What we do is we feed we feed Roughly about 100 to 120 homeless, five nights a week. Supplying 500 meals a week, roughly. Yeah, wow. And we also supply camping equipment and things like that. It started off as a family initiative, but it's really a community initiative. Because we're unfunded, we rely on the kindness of the community to donate to us. And we then turn donated food into meals. We also do food hampers. Anything at all that we can give to those out there that are struggling that are homeless we do.

Speaker: 1:50

I saw, I think when I first started following your Facebook was somebody in one of the community groups had shared one of your posts looking for food donations and then I started clicking through. I see that sometimes you're out delivering food at midnight.

Speaker 3: 2:03

Yeah, so I start my food delivery service at about 6. 30pm.

Speaker: 2:06

Yep.

Speaker 3: 2:07

And it takes me between four and a half and five and a half hours to get around everyone. Because I stop off at everyone individually which I think is quite important rather than people coming up and asking for food, taking away their dignity, I offer it. So, therefore, going around to everyone individually also allows an opportunity to, you know, ask the important questions like, are you okay, which I like to do every day rather than once a year.

Speaker: 2:31

Yeah, awesome. Yeah. So, big question for me is, why do you do that?

Speaker 3: 2:37

Alright, so, I guess at the beginning of all this I'll start by telling you I was a meth addict for 25 years. About a year ago I had a rough bottom in my life where my partner had had enough of my antics and kicked me out and I ended up homeless. I knew that meth is, is what had stuffed up my life and what comes up must come down. And decided that I'd I'd come off meth and I'd come crashing down. And the crash was pretty heavy. And they had me pondering whether or not life was worth it, and I decided it wasn't. So I started to gas myself into my vehicle, and somehow the police stumbled on me, and pulled me out of my car unconscious. And when I come to, I realise that that I couldn't even accomplish that properly. So I should try and go to rehab and get cleaned up. So I went to Mooneeah Rehab and did their three month program, and I haven't looked back. When I came out of rehab my partner had you know, taken me back, and we were going for a drive along Reckliffe, and I noticed you know, roughly about 40, 49 cars, tents, etc. With one to two people in each, up along Reckliffe waterfront, and you know, I didn't realise how bad the homeless situation had got. In years prior, myself and my brother at Christmas time had done a, Bit of a drive around Redcliffe and delivered food hampers to about 20 people along there so the amount of homelessness really increased and said to my partner I said this is disgusting I said you know I need to help these people I'm going to see what I can do so I went on Facebook and I I asked people if they wanted to help donate non perishable goods that I could do a food hamper drop to them and the response was really good and so I did a big food drop to these people and then the donations kept coming in. So I did another food donation drop to these people. And then someone donated some some meat. And my partner goes, Oh, I'm going to have to cook some meals. So she cooked some meals. And that, that went down really well. And then from there I sort of, kept it going. And now it's turned into something massive where Today I just picked up our second ute. So we're gonna start Gonna start, well, we want to cut our delivery time down from Four and a half hours down to two and a quarter. We'd also expand to do more of Sandgate, Because there's quite a homeless population over there.

Speaker: 4:42

Yeah. That's a massive turnaround. for you. That's, congratulations. I think that's, that's impressive. And is what drives you to keep doing, are you trying to help the other people that you're delivering to turn around?

Speaker 3: 4:56

Yeah, look, the way I see it is, had someone to come up to me and offered me an ear to listen to and saying to eat, maybe I wouldn't have got to that point where I was prepared to end it. Just being an heir, you know, a problem a problem shared is a problem halved. And you know, sometimes just being an heir to some people can make all the difference. So that's the sort of the driving reason behind it. Since going out there and doing this, I've, I've got three people now that go to rehab by sharing my story to them which is a win. And I've had three other people say that if it wasn't for the work in Norris Street they don't think they'd be here today. So that's, you know, six lives that we've impacted by doing what we do.

Speaker: 5:32

Yeah, wow.

Speaker 3: 5:33

You know, when I look back on my past and I think about all the negative stuff I've done to the world, it's good to be actually doing something positive for a change. And you know, the benefits of you know, helping people is massive. It really helps me with you know, with my recovery as well, you know, being reasonably fresh out of it. I'm 11. 75 months clean. Okay. Which is which is, which is awesome. And is, is,

Speaker: 6:00

is recovery an ongoing thing? Is it, is it something that you've got to think about or be active on every day?

Speaker 3: 6:11

Look for me it's, for me I guess I keep myself very entertained with this. I put in 16 and a half hours a day, five days a week to it.

Speaker: 6:17

I think as I asked the question I'm like, this is your recovery isn't it? This is my recovery, yeah. Doing this is your recovery.

Speaker 3: 6:23

Yeah, and it's good to be able to help other people. Look I, I give up working full time so I can do this to help other people. So I give up an income. My partner works full time which is how we get by. Mm hmm. And I'm pretty happy to put in the time but, you know, it's one of these It's one of these beasts that the more I feed it, the more it takes, you know, and I, it's getting bigger than Ben Hur and the need out there is massive.

Speaker: 6:46

Before you did Norrish Street, what did you do? What was what was Bo during the day?

Speaker 3: 6:52

Well, for the last four years I haven't been able to work because I've had five carpal tunnel surgeries and I just had my last lot while I was in rehab and you know, the, the surgeons told me that I can't go back to my job as being a mechanical fitter welder because I've End up causing more damage to my hands, and I'm at the point now where I can't really feel my fingertips. Okay. So that left me with you know, what am I going to do with my life? And after coming out of rehab, I did want to do some sort of community service. I just wasn't sure what that was going to look like, whether it was going to be you know, helping the elderly, or drug and alcohol, or something like that, and then this is just falling into place. You created your own. Yeah, creating my own.

Speaker: 7:29

Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, it's

Speaker 3: 7:30

not a job that pays, but it's a job that's very rewarding.

Speaker: 7:34

That's awesome. We're sitting here at something called Nella's Gourmet, Nella's Gourmet Tucker in Lawnton. Tell us about, when you said let's meet here, I figured you might have a connection here, so tell me about this place and what they do and how it then helps you.

Speaker 3: 7:46

Okay, so Tonya runs this place it's a, it's a little cafe slash carvery in Lawnton. Tonya helps us out by supplying supplying us here at Norris Street 100 hot meals a week. So, it's really required because myself and my partner, we cook 300 meals a week. Okay. On top of it. And then we've got Nella's Gourmet Taco that supplies us with a hundred and we've got an Indian chef that supplies us with a hundred. We also have Domino's here in Strathclyne, which is tonight supplying us with a hundred and fifteen pizzas. Oh, wow. They do that once a month for us now.

Speaker: 8:20

Okay.

Speaker 3: 8:20

And we're soon going to have Nando's in North Lakes, which are going to start supplying us with ninety meals a fortnight.

Speaker: 8:26

Yep.

Speaker 3: 8:26

Like I said, this is, this is a really big deal. A family initiative that's now a community initiative. Because we're unfunded, we do rely on everyone in the community. And more and more community people are starting to jump on board. It's really good to see community helping community.

Speaker: 8:41

And so, to that end, what is it that people can do to help? And what type of help are you looking for?

Speaker 3: 8:47

Look, I guess donations of any sort of perishable or non perishable food that we can make meals out of. That goes a long way. Camping equipment, anything that you'd go camping with. It's the sort of stuff that we need for for people that are doing it rough out there. We don't have too many volunteering positions available, unfortunately. I've got to be really careful of people's safety out there. Yep. It's not always a hospitable environment. And because of drugs, alcohol, psychosis, mental illness, And everything else that comes with homelessness. I do unfortunately see a lot of assaults. It's not it's not a place I can really put volunteers into. We are this year having a Christmas function. Thanks to Tania here at Nella's Gourmet Taka. So we're going to be putting on Christmas dinner for our local homeless population. Not quite sure how big it's going to be yet, but I'm expecting probably around 100 people.

Speaker: 9:37

Yep.

Speaker 3: 9:38

So that's something massive. If anyone wants to donate anything to that cause, or to any sort of fundraising.

Speaker: 9:45

Including presents?

Speaker 3: 9:46

Including presents.

Speaker: 9:47

Okay. Yeah, that would be, that would be awesome.

Speaker 3: 9:49

I'm pretty new to this, this sort of this sort of thing, so I'm still trying to work it out as I go, but that's, that's the rough gist of what we want to do. And if anyone has any great ideas on how they want to be part of it, I'm welcome to it.

Speaker: 10:00

And is there any types of businesses or brands you're trying to get the attention of at the moment? Have you got anything? in mind that you're like, I just wish I could get some better help here or, or is there a food type that you like? We're always chasing our tail on that one.

Speaker 3: 10:14

Yeah, actually, we are always chasing fresh meat. It's one of the hard things for us to get. Plastic Chinese containers is another thing that is quite difficult for us to get. Both those items alone cost us close on a thousand dollars a week.

Speaker: 10:26

Okay.

Speaker 3: 10:27

Fuel to run our vehicles is another one. It costs us around about 350 a week. Other than that, look Like I said, perishable, non perishable food because we do do grocery hampers for the homeless people.

Speaker: 10:36

Yep.

Speaker 3: 10:37

And a hundred bags of groceries is a hell of a lot of groceries. Yeah. Yeah,

Speaker: 10:41

absolutely. Tell me about what the future looks like for A, let's start with Nourish Street. What, what do you plan to be? It should be doing, look like, feel like in a year or two.

Speaker 3: 10:51

Oh, look, I've got a dream, whether it's going to take a year or two or take a lot longer is yet to be decided. Now we are on the way on our way to becoming a registered charity. We recently became incorporated association, and we've put in our application to the AT& C to become a registered charity. When we do that, hopefully we can start getting some funding and some grants, which is going to make it a lot easier on on the community because, you know, I understand there's tight times out there for everyone. Yep. So what I'd like Norris Street to one day be is you know, maybe a piece of land with some Donga type accommodation on it where people can come to to feel safe. You know, they could stay for a night, a week, a month, two months. And it would be a sort of like a, a temporary spot where they can come to be safe, but also have a, a hub there where people can access physical health, mental health, drug and alcohol help. Employment agencies, a vet, a lot of them have pets. That sort of thing. So a one stop shop really.

Speaker: 11:47

Yeah, awesome. My next question would have, well still is, what about for Beau? What's, you know, a year or two, but I, I think you can have your hands full and that certainly grows into some, some type of full time, absolute activity for you then, doesn't it?

Speaker 3: 12:01

It already is. Yeah, it's already 16 hours a day. Yeah. I guess, yeah, I, I, When it grows, hopefully you know, I can grow with it and I can be sort of managing it more so than I still want to be out on the front line doing what I do because for me it's really rewarding and it's, it's good seeing that we're making a difference out there. Eventually, you know, it'd be nice when we're funded to have staff and, and really be making a difference out there on a grand scale, you know, not just be covering eight suburbs, but maybe covering all the Brisbane, maybe all the Queensland eventually, who knows.

Speaker: 12:35

Yep.

Speaker 3: 12:36

Yeah, we'll see. We'll see what happens.

Speaker: 12:38

That's awesome. Thank you very much for chatting to me today. Thank

Speaker 3: 12:41

you for your

Speaker: 12:41

time. Cheers.

Speaker 3: 12:42

She's she's seen the positive change and, you know, she's a big part of Nourish Street as well. In fact, I'd call her the backbone of it. She puts in so much work and effort, works full time as well as cooks 300 meals a week from home. She's an absolute weapon. She's awesome.