The Poverty Truth Commission means a lot to me, and the reason that the Poverty Truth Commission means a lot to me is because it provides a lot of opportunities for people across society to be able to link in with high decision-makers in government, MSPs, policy makers and it provides us opportunities to meet with these people on a regular basis so that we can ensure that our ideas and that the things that we want to change with our government can be put across to the people that have the power to change it.

One of the things that I was involved in within the Poverty Truth Commission was within the prison sector. At the time I was working in the prison sector as a support worker for rehabilitation. I was given an opportunity by the Poverty Truth Commission to be paired up with a high up policy maker in government who had a lot of power to change things across the prison sector, to change policy to ensure that policies were fair, non-judgemental and everyone received the time, compassion, care, and treatment they needed to ensure that they could rehabilitate to the best availability of their ability. I think this was a really important experience cos because it meant that I could give first line experience on the front line to high decision makers in government who make these policies that filter down to management within the prison, and filter down to all prison staff. That is a very important opportunity that I was given and I'm so grateful that the Poverty Truth commission gave me this opportunity.

One memory that sticks out to me is when I was paired up with this government policymaker, I actually got to visit a building in Edinburgh which is where a lot of policy makers work out of and the Scottish government and I got a tour and I got to met all different teams from across the Scottish government who worked on all different types of policies and all different kinds of areas and I got to ask as many questions as I needed to and I got to find out so many answers as to why sometimes things in government aren't focused on and you know it made a lot of a sense that sometimes it's just about budgets and that we need to balance budgets and that we need to prioritize what is in the most need at that point in time and maybe the year after we can then prioritize a different sector of government.

So I think the Poverty Truth Commission is extremely important and needs continuous funding and support and the reason for that is because it provides such an amazing opportunity to people across society to ensure that their ideas are transferred over to government and that they're transferred into different policies that affect everyone's life across society to ensure that we can make the most fair and amazing society for everyone.