Our front-line staff members at Radius Community Health and Healing spend much of their time responding to people who are in the middle of experiencing a serious crisis. Such immediate-response situations leave little room for our front-line staff members to explore opportunities with our clients that can help them to achieve lasting changes. Our goal for the Neighbourhood Contribution Program is to train and certify 45 staff members in Motivational Interviewing. Motivational Interviewing is an intentional and organized way of assisting individuals to recognize the challenges they are having and helping them begin taking steps to address them. Motivational Interviewing will allow our staff members to tackle the drug poisoning epidemic in a more focused way. With the funding from the Neighbourhood Contribution Program, we are able to cover the costs of this educational opportunity. 

Everyone deserves to feel safe in our communities, including unhoused neighbours and people who use illegal drugs. Businesses and neighbourhoods play a key role in shaping how we collectively mitigate the dangers of a toxic drug supply. Already, members of the EACH+EVERY business coalition have successfully reversed more than 10 drug poisonings in alleys and public spaces near their facilities. With the support of the Neighbourhood Contribution Program, we continue to shift the voices that businesses bring to drug policy conversations through media engagement, public action, and  membership growth in Edmonton’s hardest-hit neighbourhoods.

At BSCS Youth Services, we connect vulnerable, at-risk, and high-risk youth to harm reduction education and awareness. With the funding from the Neighbourhood Contribution Program, our BSCS Youth Outreach Harm Reduction Specialist will be able to work collaboratively with on-site supports to provide community awareness, education, and service delivery for those who struggle with trauma, addiction, and the overdose crisis. The Harm Reduction Specialist will also help our maturing youth who are in the process of transitioning to adulthood. A few ways in which our Harm Reduction Specialist will assist our youth is by scheduling and attending medical appointments, identifying social services, programs, and housing opportunities, as well as providing them with harm reduction supplies, food, and clothing.

At HIV Edmonton, we are proud to offer harm reduction supplies five days a week. Funding from the Neighbourhood Contribution Program will allow us to increase our capacities to offer services that are designed to suit the needs of our community in the best way possible. Within the span of the Neighbourhood Contribution Program, we hope to continue our work on creating a dedicated space for individuals to have regular access to harm reduction supplies. We also plan to expand our needle debris cleanup services to the communities and businesses that surround us. Doing so will help both the individuals we serve and the people who live in our neighbourhood.

Nék̓em: To Change Something is an Indigenous-led organization staffed by volunteers with front-line experience on the streets of Edmonton. We deliver harm reduction supplies, provide education around safer use, and offer outreach to individuals who want to connect to social programs and services. With the funding from the Neighbourhood Contribution Program, we are able to strengthen our outreach program. We are also able to provide more people with hygiene products, freshly-cooked meals, and other essential supplies. With this funding, we hope to support at least 500 houseless individuals.

CHEW is a crisis drop-in center specifically for 2SLGBTQIA+ youth and emerging adults who face barriers of poverty, substance use, mental health, and oppression. At CHEW, we use a client-centered, trauma-informed approach to harm reduction. Our mission is to create a sense of home for our youth and provide them with a support system similar to that of a family. We also encourage our youth to believe in themselves and to have pride in who they are. The Neighbourhood Contribution Program funding will allow us  to hire a full-time Crisis Intervention Worker who will oversee  harm reduction activities and help us evaluate the programs we offer at CHEW.

Many communities are stigmatized by gender and sexual variance as well as substance use. The Self-Care & Safety Strategies with Substance Use Project will provide education and raise awareness within Edmonton’s LGBTQ+ newcomer and ethnocultural communities. The project’s goal is to identify steps to better address the issue of addictions and drug poisonings in these particular populations. The Neighbourhood Contribution Program funding will help us achieve this mission.

4B Harm Reduction Society (4BHRS) responds to the systemic social health challenges that affect  people who use drugs (PWUD), the unhoused, and other marginalized populations. With this supplemental funding through the Neighbourhood Contribution Program,  we will expand our outreach capabilities to respond to drug poisonings, provide supportive care to community members, as well as distribute Naloxone and various harm reduction supplies. We will also continue to place strong emphasis on conversations involving decriminalization and the use of safe supply. Ultimately, our project aims to reduce stigma and discrimination toward PWUD.

At QTHC’s Peer N Peer program, we have seen high rates of drug poisonings and deaths due to substances being cut with harmful additives. Our programs specifically focus on 2SLGBTQ+ individuals, many of whom engage in Chemsex (Sexualized Substance Use). Our QTHC’s Harm Reduction Supply Delivery Project utilizes a van that provides mobile harm reduction services, supplies, and education where they are needed most. The Neighbourhood Contribution Program grant will allow Peer N Peer to purchase a Bruker FTIR spectrometer to provide accessible, confidential substance testing–a strategy that has the potential to save lives on a day-to-day basis.