How adult learning can make a difference
1:00pm Wednesday 21st May 2008
AS classmates downed their first pint on their 18th birthdays, alcoholic Gary James was already a heroin-addicted school drop-out facing three years in prison.
While his friends played football after school Gary was stealing to fund his habit which ranged from £30 to in excess of £100 a day.
But after spending more than half of his adult life in prison Gary, now 30, has turned his life around and thrown himself into education.
The father-of-three has been honoured with an Adult Learners' achievement award after dedicating the last three years to becoming a fitness instructor through Swindon College.
"I destroyed my youth with drink, drugs and crime and because of that I thought I would never live to see my 30th birthday," he said.
"But now here I am, getting qualified and giving myself the respect I deserved from the start. I would still be in the gutter if it wasn't for getting another crack at education."
Now living in the Railway Village with partner Adele and children Benjamen, five, Ave, two and Cora, seven months, his life is a far cry from that of his friends who continued down the road of self destruction.
"Many of my friends have died in the street," he said. "I've lost mates to drug overdoses and drug-related violence and even out of those who have survived many will spend the rest of their lives in prison.
"That won't be me any more. I missed my boy's birth because I was banged up but I have promised all my children that I will be there for everything from now on."
During his childhood Gary was expelled from three primary schools and five secondary schools.
By the time he was due to take his GCSEs he was already serving a three-year sentence at a young offenders' institution.
But, after getting out of prison at 27, Gary realised something had to change, so he signed up to Swindon College's Adult Learning Programme at North Star Campus.
Gary finished the first year of his National Diploma in Outdoor Recreation with the highest ever grades for the course.
He then progressed on to the national diploma in sport and outdoor education and volunteers for Swindon Town, working with the Twilight football unit.
He has now been asked to be a director for Stepping Forward, a facility for vulnerable youngsters based at St John's Church in Whitbourne Avenue.
There, he plans to use his experience to help troubled youngsters in the same position he found himself in as a teenager.
He said: "What I did to myself was regrettable. It's sad it ever got like that and I know I am lucky to be alive and have a family who love me.
"But if something can come out of the misery I caused myself and others, it's that I can help others who start to find themselves going down that path. If kids turn round to me and say what do you know about it' I can say, I know that I am lucky that I lived to tell the tale'."