Friday 16 October 2015

Harm Reduction: A Family Focus (EVENT)



Harm Reduction: A Family Focus

Because it could be anyone's child

Ronnie Power and Rose Barbour are pleased to invite you to a powerful and important panel presentation entitled “Harm Reduction: A Family Focus”. 

Harm reduction aims to keep people safe and minimize death, disease, and injury from high risk behaviour such as drug use. It involves a range of support services and strategies to enhance the knowledge, skills, resources, and supports for individuals, families and communities to be safer and healthier.

Our major sponsor, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, is bringing people in from across Canada to join our panel to share their stories and knowledge with Islanders. The goal is to educate individuals, families, professionals, and the public on the importance of harm reduction in our province as it pertains to drug use. PEI has harm reduction programs that are saving lives every day. We’ll hear more about them as well.

Panelists will include: 

Donna May, moms united and mandated to saving the lives of Drug Users (Toronto)
Petra Schulz,
moms united and mandated to saving the lives of Drug Users (Edmonton)
Donald MacPherson, Executive Director, Canadian Drug Policy Coalition (Vancouver)
Ann Marie Carr, Health PEI, Public Health Nursing, Provincial Needle Exchange Program
Tom Adams
Addictions System Navigator, Health PEI, Addictions Services

Sadly, two of our panelists, Donna and Petra, have lost children to addiction. Connected by grief, they joined with other moms to form a group called “moms united and mandated to saving the lives of Drug Users” (mumsDU). As panelists, they will share their stories of loss and how access to harm reduction programs may have saved their children. They share their powerful and painful stories to raise awareness in the hopes of affecting change so that another mother doesn’t have to bury her child. 

You can get more information about our panelists on their websites:

Canadian Drug Policy Coalition: http://drugpolicy.ca/

moms united and mandated to saving the lives of Drug Users:http://www.mumsdu.com/

Place: Reach Centre, 223 Mason Road, Stratford
Date: October 29, 2015
Time: 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Cost: FREE

RSVP: Rose at behindtheaddiction@gmail.com or Ronnie at 902-892-4643

We hope to see you there!





Friday 9 October 2015

A great success!


Left to right: Nicole Publicover, Roni Wakelin Power, Cheryl Roche, and Rose Barbour 

The Chicken Soup for the Soul: Think Possible book launch and signing on Tuesday was a great success. Thank you to all who came out to purchase books in support of the Reach Centre, a wonderful and important program for young Islanders in recovery. I am thrilled to tell you that you helped to raise almost $1,000. Well done everyone!

Tomorrow (October 10th), I will be going up to my old stomping grounds in West Prince for a book signing at JC Handyman Services & Sales in Alberton from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm. All proceeds from the book sales will also support the Reach Centre. Looking forward to seeing everyone!

Sincerely,
Rose