• Home
  • About
  • Table of Contents
    • Street College >
      • Introduction >
        • History of Why?
        • What are Street College, Street School, SC Essentials?
        • Facilitator Readiness
      • Everyday Best Practice Recommendations >
        • Confronting Stigma
        • Understanding Intersectional Systems of Oppression
        • Real life needs of folks on the drug war front line
        • Staff self-care and burnout prevention
      • Using These Tools >
        • Meeting folks where they are at
        • Praxis assessment
        • Letting go of prescribed outcomes
        • Taking leadership from service users
        • Interagency Collaboration
      • Modules >
        • Lesson Plan Template
        • Blood Borne Infections
        • Getting Tested
        • Navigating Health Care
        • Party Safe - Integrating Harm Reduction Into How We Use
        • Overdose Prevention & Naloxone
        • Safer Injection Practices
        • Safer Inhalation Practices
        • First Aid
        • Stigma
        • Living Outside
        • Drug Checking
        • Communication
        • Peer Support
      • Interactive Games and Activities
    • The Meth Booklet >
      • Introduction
      • Meth 101
      • History in Brief
      • Ways People Use
      • Reducing Meth’s Harm
      • Where Are You At?
      • Meth Psychosis
      • The Crash
      • Overdose
      • Treatment / Taking a Break
      • Sex & Meth
      • Links for Further Reading
  • Contact
ANKORS Street College
  • Home
  • About
  • Table of Contents
    • Street College >
      • Introduction >
        • History of Why?
        • What are Street College, Street School, SC Essentials?
        • Facilitator Readiness
      • Everyday Best Practice Recommendations >
        • Confronting Stigma
        • Understanding Intersectional Systems of Oppression
        • Real life needs of folks on the drug war front line
        • Staff self-care and burnout prevention
      • Using These Tools >
        • Meeting folks where they are at
        • Praxis assessment
        • Letting go of prescribed outcomes
        • Taking leadership from service users
        • Interagency Collaboration
      • Modules >
        • Lesson Plan Template
        • Blood Borne Infections
        • Getting Tested
        • Navigating Health Care
        • Party Safe - Integrating Harm Reduction Into How We Use
        • Overdose Prevention & Naloxone
        • Safer Injection Practices
        • Safer Inhalation Practices
        • First Aid
        • Stigma
        • Living Outside
        • Drug Checking
        • Communication
        • Peer Support
      • Interactive Games and Activities
    • The Meth Booklet >
      • Introduction
      • Meth 101
      • History in Brief
      • Ways People Use
      • Reducing Meth’s Harm
      • Where Are You At?
      • Meth Psychosis
      • The Crash
      • Overdose
      • Treatment / Taking a Break
      • Sex & Meth
      • Links for Further Reading
  • Contact

Peer Support

Peer SupportHelping Friends
Community Organizing
  • Facilitation skills
  • Event production
  • Resource production

Communities of people who use drugs, especially in small, rural or remote locations, often have self-organized structures of mutual aid. These structures have developed organically from the ground up and are the ideal place to build from when wanting to activate these communities around larger issues. A big part of this is recognizing the skills and value in the ‘ad-hoc’ inter-connection, peer advocacy, peer education and community organizing that people are already a part of. Recognizing and acknowledging the skills and aptitudes gained through activities that may be stigmatized within the drug war is a process of reframing to see value where we have been trained to see stigma
For example:
Experience
Skills
Finding and securing connections to drug sources
Maintaining relationships, including across challenging power dynamics
Doing research
Fundraising
Tracking people down
Living in group houses, SROs, or outside
Adaptivity
Conflict resolution and communication skills
Frugality
Creative problem solving
Being stigmatized in accessing health care
Researching conditions
Advocating for care
Educating Care providers
Learning alternative or interim medicine practices
Self-care around rejection
Experiencing systemic discrimination in systems like social assistance
Critical systems analysis
Personal Advocacy
Accessing navigation support
Navigating bureaucracies

Key pieces that prevent grassroots groups from being able to organize events or produce resources are stigma and funding barriers. This is where working with an organization or professional ally can help. It is imperative that professional allies supporting grassroots communities not offer support in ways that are patronizing or conditional. Keep the pieces discussed in the “Meeting Folks Where they are At” section in play while helping with things like venue bookings, funding applications, or establishing partnership agreements. 

Groups like VANDU and SOLID provide great models as to how user groups can maintain their voice and autonomy while working with allies to bring their voices and actions to larger stages. In Victoria, the Street College program helped with the organization and production of SOLID’s User Forum, a now annual event that offers a full day of speakers, workshops, community building and public action. See also on Facebook groups like https://www.facebook.com/CPDDW 
Political ContextIn its very origin story, Street College has always been about creating and maintaining bridges to connect disenfranchised people with personal and collective power. A part of this is through democratic education and opportunities to explore and dissect the context that enacts this disenfranchisement. 

We have included some examples of presentations used in Victoria’s Street College. Other examples could include a street school session leading up to an election cycle addressing voter registration and accessibility, or a street college session creating space for drug user/peer dialogue around housing developments, transit service or accessing services like the leisure access pass (recreation access for low-income folks). 

Discussion Topics
Giving People Drugs: NAOMI, SALOME and MAP projects.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0KRWVz0vaqJRXM0WG80dFBzY09sRVgzRGtXUGM0Ml9YWG1B

The First Opium War: Queen Victoria was a Drug Dealer
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0KRWVz0vaqJeExGYUpvRzI0ckpYVXZfcDBmRVo4QUNfRjJV

Short History of Drug User Movement in Victoria
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0KRWVz0vaqJc3hMMlBqVndZa3MxMGZOM3BiT0E2UXZWcjlF

Harm Reduction Principles
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0KRWVz0vaqJWndXandDLS0tVlhjbWRCUnhJQnJlek40dy1J

Understanding Colonial Violence as a “determinant of health”
  • What happens when we re-frame “marginalized” to “targeted”? When suffering can be understood as systemic, and not something that is a personal failing or fault

Capitalism/Mental Illness
Johann Hari: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OAMLR38-AI&t=328s


Suggested Resources
https://crimethinc.com/

https://theicarusproject.net/

http://aorta.coop/

https://www.newsociety.com/Books/C/Catch-the-Fire

https://www.facebook.com/CPDDW
ANKORS Street College - ©2020/21
  • Home
  • About
  • Table of Contents
    • Street College >
      • Introduction >
        • History of Why?
        • What are Street College, Street School, SC Essentials?
        • Facilitator Readiness
      • Everyday Best Practice Recommendations >
        • Confronting Stigma
        • Understanding Intersectional Systems of Oppression
        • Real life needs of folks on the drug war front line
        • Staff self-care and burnout prevention
      • Using These Tools >
        • Meeting folks where they are at
        • Praxis assessment
        • Letting go of prescribed outcomes
        • Taking leadership from service users
        • Interagency Collaboration
      • Modules >
        • Lesson Plan Template
        • Blood Borne Infections
        • Getting Tested
        • Navigating Health Care
        • Party Safe - Integrating Harm Reduction Into How We Use
        • Overdose Prevention & Naloxone
        • Safer Injection Practices
        • Safer Inhalation Practices
        • First Aid
        • Stigma
        • Living Outside
        • Drug Checking
        • Communication
        • Peer Support
      • Interactive Games and Activities
    • The Meth Booklet >
      • Introduction
      • Meth 101
      • History in Brief
      • Ways People Use
      • Reducing Meth’s Harm
      • Where Are You At?
      • Meth Psychosis
      • The Crash
      • Overdose
      • Treatment / Taking a Break
      • Sex & Meth
      • Links for Further Reading
  • Contact