We know we’re onto something pretty special here at Beacon.

This is a poem written by one of our employees about their experience with us in Bangalow. It’s captures the essence of the social enterprise employment model.

At Beacon, and in every social enterprise across the world, we’re creating judgement-free workplaces that focus on the potential of people, rather than their pasts. We know (and decades of research into social enterprise shows) that if people are given a chance and the right level of support – lives can be turned around.

LINT TRAP.

I came here wrecked and raw.

Amphetamine had eaten me alive —

chewed through the people who once loved me,

burned the bed where I used to dream,

gutted the version of me

that could look anyone in the eye

or contribute much of anything.

I was noise without a signal.

Static in my own head.

Nothing left but hunger and haunt.

 

But the laundry didn’t flinch.

It didn’t need an explanation,

didn’t ask for an apology.

It only asked for my hands —

trembling, wasted things —

and so I gave them,

and I gave in.

 

I let the machines swallow my fear.

Surrendered to folding towels,

folding pieces of myself back into something human.

I fed sheets into the mouths of roaring beasts

and sometimes dared to think about forgiving myself.

 

Days bled into months.

Somewhere between rinse and spin,

between steam burns and breakdowns,

this place washed my mind clean.

Scrubbed the rot from my spirit.

I remembered how to stand,

how to speak like I belonged on this side of the dirt,

because someone here looked at me

like I still mattered.

 

It’s not work, really.

It’s resurrection.

It’s given me the life I thought I had snorted, smoked, and clawed away.

The life I was never supposed to have —

but somehow, I found it here,

in the roar of these machines,

in the beating heart of this weird, beautiful place.

 

It doesn’t sparkle.

It smells like sweat, soap, and second chances

but it’s exactly where I’m supposed to be. 

 

If you’re curious to learn more about Beacon and the magic of social enterprise, subscribe to our newsletter.