Most-needed items for April 2023

Here is the list of our Most-Needed Items for April 2023!

CLOTHING

Hats, gloves & scarves

Jackets & sweaters

Rain rackets & rain ponchos

Long-sleeved shirts

Pants & sweatpants

Socks & underwear

PERSONAL CARE

Travel-sized toiletries

Shampoo & conditioner

Soap & body wash

Body lotion & lip balm

Hairbrushes & combs

Toothpaste & toothbrushes

Cotton swabs & razors

Pads & tampons

OTHER

Coffee mugs

Laundry detergent

Hand warmers

It’s easy to make a drop-off appointment: Make an appointment here

If it’s more feasible to make a gift of money instead, you can do that any time on our website (and get a tax receipt!): Donate online

Love in the Time of Fentanyl: Film Screening & Panel

Morel Support & Goodwill Social Club present:

LOVE IN THE TIME OF FENTANYL

a film screening, panel discussion + bannock dogs in support of SUNSHINE HOUSE

LOVE IN THE TIME OF FENTANYL is an award-winning documentary portraying a group of misfits, artists, and drug users operating a renegade safe injection site in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. It is an intimate portrait of a community fighting to save lives and keep hope alive in a neighborhood ravaged by the overdose crisis with a short panel discussion to follow (TBA). As well, Bannock Dogs will be sold in the adjacent former Khao House space by members of Sunshine House - come hungry!

DATE: Wednesday, April 12, 2023

TIME: Doors open @ 6pm, Film Screening @ 6:30pm, Panel Discussion at 8pm

LOCATION: The Goodwill Social Club @ 625 Portage Avenue

COST: $10 or PWYC with all proceeds to support Sunshine House. No one turned away for lack of funds.

>> BUY ADVANCE TICKETS HERE <<

Pay What You Can tickets will be available at the door

The Goodwill Social Club is a physically accessible location with gender-neutral washrooms. The film will be screened with Closed Captioning for increased accessibility, and seating will be available. Harm reduction supplies will be available. For additional safety and accessibility concerns, please e-mail manager@thegoodwill.ca or hello@morel-support.com.

This event is licensed and 18+, and is sponsored by Morel Support and The Goodwill Social Club.

About Sunshine House:

Sunshine House is a peer-led, not-for-profit community drop-in and resource centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba that focuses on harm reduction and social inclusion. In addition to providing programming that fulfills people's social, community, and recreational needs, they also operate Winnipeg's first and only mobile overdose prevention site (MOPS) which offers supervised overdose prevention, drug testing, information, harm reduction supplies, and referal services. While Health Canada has provided Sunshine House some basic funding to cover some labour and supplies, in-house fundraising efforts allowed for the purchase of the RV as well as ongoing operations and investments. This includes the recent purchase of a mobile spectrometer: an expensive piece of drug-testing equipment that tests for fentanyl, benzodiazepines and hundreds of other compounds to help to protect drug users from an increasingly toxic drug supply.

A federal Urgent Public Health Needs exemption from Health Canada under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act currently allows for MOPS to provide these life saving services, but a new bill, introduced by the province of Manitoba on March 14, 2023, now threatens its' existence. Bill 33: The Addictions Services Act would place needless additional licensing and inspection restrictions on an already underfunded, overextended not-for-profit public and community health service, contrary to best evidence-based practices.

To learn more about the MOPS initiative and Sunshine House, click here.

About the Film:

As the number of overdose deaths in Vancouver, Canada reaches an all-time high, the Overdose Prevention Society (OPS) opens its doors—a renegade supervised drug consumption site that primarily employs active and former drug users. Its staff and volunteers save lives and give hope to a marginalized community as the overdose crisis rages throughout Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The film follows Sarah, an activist who opened OPS without government approval, as she strives to raise awareness about the crisis; Trey, a graffiti artist and former heroin user who spends his days reversing overdoses and memorializing lost community members; Ronnie, a seasoned frontline worker nicknamed “Narcan Jesus,” struggling with burnout from the demanding work and witnessing so much loss; Norma, a much-loved Indigenous elder in the community, who cooks meals for the staff when she’s not administering naloxone; and Dana, an active fentanyl user who constantly reverses overdoses at work while struggling with his own drug use. With loved ones dying in unprecedented numbers, the staff at OPS does whatever it takes to save lives and find radical new ways out of the devastating but widely ignored crisis ravaging their community. Love in the Time of Fentanyl is an intimate, observational look beyond the stigma of people who use drugs, revealing the courage of those facing tragedy in a neighborhood often referred to as ground zero of the overdose crisis.

To learn more about the film, click here.

Panel Discussion:

TBD.

Bill 33 threatens the Mobile Overdose Prevention Site

The recently introduced Bill 33 threatens the existence of our Mobile Overdose Prevention Site. Read this op-ed, by our executive director Levi Foy, to find out why.

Then, write to your MLA, telling them that you do not support Bill 33 and want it to be rescinded. Click on the name of your MLA on this page to find their contact information: MLA Constituency Listing. If you don’t know the name of your MLA, you can look it up at this link: Elections Manitoba.

Why Bill 33 could shut down, not support, the Mobile Overdose Prevention Site

Originally published in the Winnipeg Free Press, Monday, March 20, 2023

By Levi Foy, executive director, Sunshine House

Sunshine House has been operating the Mobile Overdose Prevention Site (MOPS) in Winnipeg since Oct. 29, 2022. Based out of a recreational vehicle, we operate six days a week for at least six hours per day.

It is an Indigenous-led space, staffed by a dedicated team composed entirely of Black and Indigenous people with lived and living experience of using drugs. We’ve had more than 4,600 visits, handed out more than 10,000 drug-related harm-reduction supplies, and shared coffees, snacks and chats with thousands of Winnipeggers.

And yes, on more than 800 occasions, individuals have used substances on the site. Fewer than 10 of those required immediate overdose intervention. None of those people died or required hospitalization.

This is harm reduction. Harm reduction recognizes that human beings engage in all types of risky activities and sometimes those risks require collaboration and support for survival. Using drugs carries risk. So does driving a car, which is why we wear seatbelts, put our kids in child seats and switch over to snow tires in the winter.

As harm-reduction practitioners, our goal is to value every person in the community on their own terms. We recognize every person is on their own journey. Our work focuses on providing people with the information, resources and support they need to get through the day alive.

In the eight months since we announced plans for the MOPS, the Manitoba government and its ministers have publicly expressed many opinions on the topic of supervised drug consumption. Most recently, this included an op-ed in this paper from the minister of mental health and community wellness, Janice Morley-Lecomte.

This is the standard pattern. The government speaks in the media; they never speak with us. We have not had a single phone call, meeting, email or in-person site visit from Morley-Lecomte, her predecessor, or anyone else in her department or government.

The minister wants the public to think MOPS is a “fly-by-night” operation. This is not the case. Its development began in 2018 with the publication of our Safer Consumption Spaces: Winnipeg Consultation and Needs Report.

We consulted with community members, doctors and nurses, health-care stakeholders and most importantly, people who would use our services. We undertook the rigorous application process for an Urgent Public Health Need Site exemption from Health Canada. The creation of this program was done with extreme care and intentionality.

Overdose prevention sites (OPS) are different from supervised consumption sites (SCS). OPS in Canada are by definition not as comprehensive as SCS. They act as an immediate response to community needs, acting quickly in a community-based way.

Think of an OPS as a food truck and an SCS as a sit-down restaurant. Our OPS doesn’t have an SCS’s full menu of services, but it still meets essential needs people have.

The minister is correct that “comprehensive services are needed.” Unfortunately, this government views anyone who uses drugs as requiring one kind of help only. Most things in life are complex and nuanced. It’s common sense that drug use is, too.

Janice Morley-Lecomte, minister of mental health and community wellness.

Instead of engaging with those of us working every day on the ground to keep people from dying of overdose, the government introduced Bill 33. The bill could potentially disqualify our existing staff from working at the site because they are not licensed health-care practitioners. It gives sweeping powers to a provincially appointed director and would require us to completely deviate from the practices we have developed in collaboration with those who use the space. It brings the threat of closure on a bureaucratic whim.

Morley-Lecomte and Premier Heather Stefanson continue to paint people who use drugs and the provision of person-centred services as inherently unsafe.

This is not the reality. There has not been a single death at a supervised consumption site or overdose prevention site in North America since the first one opened in 2003. MOPS has already met the requirements and regulations laid out by Health Canada. The harm-reduction strategies we use are supported by decades of evidence.

The number of degrees separating every Manitoban from overdose death is continually shrinking. If you haven’t lost a loved one, it’s likely someone you know has. This bill prevents all of us from creating services for our communities that save lives, reduce strains on emergency services and instil safety.

Morley-Lecomte wrote in her opinion piece: “It’s about helping people. It always has been.” We mourn the hundreds of Manitobans who have already died waiting for the kind of help Morley-Lecomte and this government have repeatedly denied. It’s in their memory, and the interests of preventing similar harm to more people, that we ask this government to join us in a new direction — to rescind Bill 33 and adopt approaches that will actually save lives.