This charity uses McDonald’s to fight hidden homelessness

Prince William’s latest trip to see how his Homewards programme is tackling homelessness took him to a charity harnessing the universal power of McDonald’s to make a difference.

The royal visited Spiral Skills based in Lambeth, South London – one of the project’s five locations – to see how they helped young people into work and out of homelessness.

Spiral Skills has moved into The Oasis Village, a multi-agency prevention hub in Lambeth’s Tulse Hill, but also heads out into the community. Young people, dubbed as ‘Changemakers’, with lived experience of homelessness, deliver street-level outreach to young people – in schools, local fast-food chains or estates.

That includes the Makin’ It programme, in partnership with BBC Children in Need and Lambeth Council’s contextual safeguarding team. The project sees Abdoul Ndambi meet up with young people using the fast-food restaurant as a safe space to understand what they’re going through to prevent homelessness.

Ben Kahn, the Spiral Skills co-founder and director of programmes, said: “It came about because chicken shops were calling Abdoul to break up fights for years and keep people safe. Putting a bit of organisational power behind it has been a good combo. This is about finding young people at risk of homelessness, exclusion from school with SEND, and really believing in their power and their potential and showing that when they’re channelled in the right way, that they can really thrive. But we need to bring the opportunity to them.”

In 2023-2024, young people (aged 16-24) represented nearly one in five (19%) of all those assessed as homeless, or at risk of homelessness, in Lambeth.

Ndambi, Spiral Skills’ youth outreach lead, has experienced homelessness himself and he told Big Issue that shared experience and meeting children at risk where they’re at is vital to building trust and turning lives around.

“Talking to a young person about my experience allows them to break down everything that’s happening at home and feel less embarrassed about it because they know they’re talking to somebody with lived experience,” said Ndambi, 27, who also runs his own venture called One With The Village.

Read more:

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• Four people died while homeless every day in the UK last year: ‘People continue to be failed’
• Young LGBTQ+ people are made homeless because of who they are – but official stats don’t show it

He told Big Issue that he ended up sofa surfing and sleeping on the swings in his local park. Ndambi moved around a lot as a youngster, living in Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola before settling in South London.

“Mum was the centre of the love that kept me going. I felt like I was at home no matter where I was but later that got broken down,” said Ndambi.

He spoke of coming under the influence of “second caregivers who wanted something in return”.

“My mum wanted to prevent me from going down that road, but I couldn’t prevent myself from being in that situation because of the influence that was around me. So my mum thought it was best that I didn’t come home,” said Ndambi.

He ended up settling at a Centrepoint hostel, where Prince William is a patron.

Ndambi has now found a home at Spiral Skills and goes into schools and other settings to meet young people having a tough time: “They knew that I had wanted to be the change that I wanted to see.”

Prince William’s Homewards programme has awarded a grant to Spiral Skills to tackle youth homelessness in Lambeth. 

The charity is looking to act as a connector between young people experiencing homelessness and jobs and skills to help them out of poverty.

“I think we’ve always found it hard with traditional funders to explain the importance and the complexity of our service,” said Kahn. 

“We’re not just doing outreach, we’re using that to bring people in to develop skills, to connect them into other services. We really feel that Homewards grasps that and really has the young person at the centre.”

He added: “It’s nice to have a prince visit you once in a while too.”

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