Where It Started: Conversations That Built Us

As we pause to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re heading, I felt it was the right time to share a few thoughts with those who’ve walked alongside us.

Before the dashboards, before the partnerships, before anyone called it a “model” there were conversations. Quiet ones. Fierce ones. Ones that happened on street corners, in hostel kitchens, over shared meals, those 3am late night calls from someone needing help as they stood with nothing in the downpour, in a park, alone, like many founders in this space, I have so many stories but that’s where Homeless House began.

We didn’t arrive with answers. We arrived with food. With prop tickets. With safeguarding rituals disguised as jokes and envelopes. With the kind of presence that says: “You’re not a problem to solve. You’re a person to walk with.”

Outreach wasn’t a service to us, it was a relationship. Built slowly, held gently, and protected fiercely. We learned that trust doesn’t come from paperwork. It comes from showing up. Again and again. Especially when systems don’t.

From those early days, we started to see patterns. Gaps. Possibilities. We listened to young people who had been through placements, shelters, police stations, and prison wings. We didn’t just hear their stories, we built with them.

Every safeguarding ritual, every onboarding note, every design decision we’ve made since then carries the imprint of those first conversations. They taught us what emotional safety really means. What governance could look like if it was rooted in lived experience. What systems could become if they were co-created from the ground up.

This is where it started. Not with funding. Not with strategy. But with people. With trust. With the belief that something better was possible, and the quiet work of making it real.

As we step into what’s next, we carry those early conversations with us. They’re stitched into every safeguarding ritual, every design decision, every partnership we’ve built. And to those who’ve walked beside us, from the frontline to the boardroom, thank you for believing in the work before it had a name. You helped make it real.

Antonia