KENORA — A group of community advocates is trying to create a safe space people to give a voice for people who use drugs, alcohol, or are homeless.
Dr. Jonny Grek, a local physician and advocate, said the community advocacy meeting was pitched as an idea to improve communication.
“It was, let's come and discuss the issues and see if we can come up some action plans with your voice as lived experience and those organizational reps who have indicated that they want to hear what you have to say,” he said.
Grek said organizations often speak to him because he is well-placed to serve as a go-between for the people and the system.
“I have one foot in and one foot out of the system being both a position within the system [as a physician with multiple roles],” he said. “Also [as] a community advocate.”
But he added it would be much better to hear directly from the people are homeless or affected by HIV and the opioid toxicity situation.
“[To] hear it directly from the source, it's far more powerful and it's not my story to tell. I don't want to be a messenger passing on secondhand information,” said Grek. ”That's not what how it should work.”
The two meetings held so far this month had 15 people attend, Grek said.
Elauna Boutwell, another community advocate, said the meeting was held because the community has experienced several overdose deaths as well as the rise in people testing positive for HIV.
“That was kind of the impetus for reaching out to others and saying, "let's figure out how we can respond,"” she said. “I've found even in just two meetings, for me to be able to connect with the other service providers who are on the front line and with people who are living these things, it's been really refreshing to connect with people who get it and it feels like there's lots of like hope within that.”
Grek said it’s often a challenge to bring people with lived experience into place where they can speak openly with organizational representatives who actually want to listen to what they have to say.
He said they aren’t quite there yet in building up a sense of trust.
“We had a number of [people] who had shown up and given their time,” he said. ”They actually were incredibly brave to say the things that they do and really speak out about some of their frustrations and concerns about a system that they could in turn be punished for by sharing those opinions.”
Grek said he understands the system or representatives of the system will defend how they do things.
“And [what] was expressed to me after the meeting by a couple of the peers, was it's frustrating [to be asked to offer] feedback, and you're met with this sense of kind of defensiveness,” he said. “It leads to this kind of challenging relationship dynamic, but at least it was something. At least there was the start of a conversation between two parties that historically have not gone very well, but I think it's important that we build a sense of trust further than what we were able to do this week.”
Grek said one of the key reasons why it was necessary to do something differently with these meetings was to create a situation beyond finger pointing,
“This is about trying to work together, right?” he said. “To improve the system all together without anybody feeling like their job or organization is under threat. That is not our role. We're not judge and jury here.”
