KUSH! A frontline creative response to a growing crisis.

10 FAQ

1. Kush makes you temporarily, feel good, blocks out stress and enables you to sleep.

2. It deadens nerve endings and affects circulation so large sores develop, frequently on the legs. Medical support is needed but if they don't stop smoking, these sores will not dry up.

3. The boy in the video who looks like he might be dead is not dead. Kush makes you temporarily lose control of your body so the body will collapse in to any position. He was helped up.

4. Women: Kush tends to kill sexual desire in men so women are generally left alone BUT if a woman takes kush, she too will have that period when she has no control of her body and does not know what is happening and she can be raped by non smoking men taking advantage.

5. Women on the street are often sex workers in order to send money back to the family or to put children in school. Smoking kush blocks out the horror of that lifestyle. There are reports that women get in to sex work in order to support their kush habit but it is definitely the other way round.

6. Kush is cheap. There are more expensive kinds which are stronger and more dangerous. More likely to develop sores and maybe even die.

7. Kush increases appetite. The pattern is: hustle, smoke, eat lots if available and collapse and sleep. Repeat the next day.

8. It is a misconception that kush addicts were always useless, thieves or in gangs. Most had dreams and ambitions and tried, really tried to achieve something. Poverty and unemployment lie behind the crisis.

9. Do we help people or do we just point a camera at them? Filmmakers MSK and Bullet spent over 30 years between them, living on the streets. They know how to reach people and yes, we help where we can. We get treatment for sores (losing battle if they can't give up the kush), we encourage them to engage in creative activity and from there move on to skills training or we simply move someone in to a position less likely to cut off circulation or breath.

10. Yes mental health is affected and needs support. We need support in order to help themFAQ about the affects of kush and the video are answered below.

Currently Sierra Leone is at the forefront of West Africa's Kush addiction problem and it has been declared a National emergency. WAYout knows these young people. They are not just a statistic to us. WAYout staff are from these areas and manager, MSK, lived on the streets for 15 years.

Kush is destroying the lives of street youth in Sierra Leone. We want to open 3 small studios in the worst affected slums, offer training and facilities using music, media and the arts as a tool and staff's own lived experience to reach out. Our experience tells us we can help stop users slipping back in to addiction on the streets where an atmosphere of never-ending despair virtually guarantees a relapse.

These small studios are the first step towards coming in to the main Freetown studio where youth can find other skills they can learn.

We can engage addicts through music, film and art helping them give up, find jobs and re-unite with family and community.