Basta

Non Profit ID card: present your project/organisation/campaign

Questions answered by Kristina Blixt, Basta Project Coordinator.

– Where are you based? In Nykvarn, just outside Stockholm, Sweden. The Basta premises cover about 70 hectares of land, water, and buildings. 70 people work and also live on the Basta premises.

– What are you called? Basta.

– What are you doing and why? Basta is a non profit organisation, founded in 1994 and based outside Stockholm. Basta is run as a social enterprise, helping people find their way out of drugs and criminality through qualified work, housing, and meaningful spare time. The first year at Basta is part of the individual’s drug rehabilitation. After this first initial year, the individual has the possibility to stay and to become a co-worker in the social enterprise.

Basta is owned and run by former drug users. 95 % of the people who live and work at Basta have had experience with drug abuse, and have overcome it through Basta. This applies to management, middle management, and to more or less everyone that works in the company.

Basta offers help to self-help and the vision is to create better lives for the people at Basta. The rehabilitation methodology is empowerment through work. Basta offers work opportunities such as carpentry, graffiti removal, a stable, a dog nursery, and cleaning services. Today 100 people work at Basta, and 70 of them also live on the premises outside Stockholm.

Since 2003 Basta has run a vocational education centre where young school drop-outs together with adults outside the labour market study for one year. The pedagogy is based on the ideas of empowerment.

Basta’s core competence is rehabilitating people from long-term drug abuse through work. By giving people the opportunity to run a successful social enterprise, those people grow and develop new skills and take on a new path in life.

– Do you have a website/email? www.basta.se; info@basta.se .

– What makes you so special? Basta is a successful, self-sufficient social enterprise run and owned by former drug users.

 

The turning point

– Where did the idea of founding Basta come from? The idea was born in 1989, when Basta’s founder, Alec Carlberg, visited social cooperatives in Italy. For a Swedish visitor, the most remarkable feature was that so many Italian cooperatives had people in leading positions who had themselves experienced drug abuse. These people lacked, for most part, any formal therapeutic education. Instead, they used their own drug experiences, together with their newly won professional skills, in their rehabilitation work. So, the type of rehabilitation needed was self-help through enterprise and their success was built on that principle. Many of the cooperatives had, with time, also become economically profitable enterprises. Basta’s origin was inspired by these Italian examples, but today the company is no “Italian copy”, but a product of many, many hundreds of Swedish people who, through the years have sought an alternative road away from drugs.

– How did you start? In 1994 a former politician, Alec Carlberg, took the first step together with four people who had previous experiences of drug abuse. Five municipalities gave a loan to Basta, which enabled the non profit organisation to buy the premises outside Stockholm. These five municipalities then became the first customers of Basta’s rehabilitation services.

– What keeps you going every day? Basta is running a successful business as a tool to leave a long-term drug abuse. If Basta grows it means that more people can come to Basta.

– Who is your target? People wanting to leave drug abuse and customers wanting to buy our services and products.

– How are you financed? Basta is a self-sufficient social enterprise – 40 % of our income derives from offering rehabilitation services to the municipality and to the criminal justice department, 60 % derives from selling our services; construction, graffiti removal, dog tendering, breeding horses, running a vocational education centre etc.

 

The challenge

– A proud moment? When people leave drug abuse and become businesses leaders.

– A problem you face? How do you keep on growing every year in order to make room for more newcomers?

– Your personal motto when things get hard? A better life is possible.

 

www.basta.se

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