Building Awareness of Harm Reduction in York Region

Brent — Fri, 08 May 2009 03:50:13 +0000

I’m involved with the Harm Reduction Coalition of York Region. I became involved when I was a Program Manager with Street Kids International and managed the Streetjibe – addressing youth poverty in York Region program. I’m staying involved as an independent business representative that cares deeply about the kind of community I live in.

Harm reduction is a big word covering a lot of ground. For me it’s about seeing and being with the person, not the harm. It’s also about fostering a compassionate, caring, inclusive community were we don’t lock up people or stigmatize people for their struggles as a human being.The Harm Reduction Coalition is hosting a series of learning and awareness building events that bring new and hopefully greater acceptance of harm reduction policies and practices into our York Region services. Last week we held our first “building awareness event” and we had 3 guest speakers. Tom Rigehr, survivor, writer, founder of CAST Canada, Cathy Middleton, Director of Women’s Services from YWCA Kitchener-Waterloo and David Collins, President and founder of the the Toronto Harm Reduction Task Force. Through this event and others like we are working towards making York Region a more caring inclusive community.

In this video, Dave Collins gives a great overview of the evolution of harm reduction practices and policies in Toronto. I have video of Tom and Cathy but the quality just isn’t as good as they moved around quite a bit and I didn’t have an audio feed to work with.

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Building Awareness of Harm Reduction in York Region