Journal entry:
LifeSkills has asked me to do a workshop with peer tutors who want to work on a letter-writing campaign to support the Safe Injection SiteFootnote 14. I worked with Jessie and Sue. We discussed ways to generate ideas, using sentence-starters and how to scribe for someone who doesn’t want to write. Then we opened the doors and lots of people came in. Some of them wrote short, angry “Dear Stephen” letters, others were more concerned with getting the format and formal language right. But it is clear that many drug users and other Downtown Eastside residents wanted to support Insite. The tutors were great — I was impressed with how well they worked with people and how they generated ideas and enthusiasm.
Peer work is a tradition in the Downtown Eastside. Most of the UpWords group is either a paid or volunteer peer worker, and participants in all three Focus Group have taken on many different peer roles. Some of the ones I have heard about include:
Return to footnote 14 In the summer of 2006, the Federal Government under Stephen Harper threatened to close down the Safe Injection Site, a place that many LifeSkills members feel connected to.