Fantastic February
Hi, all, and welcome to the February blog post, where we’ll share what went down for us in the month of February! We hope everyone’s stayed warm & dry this winter (and well-fed, and cared-for, and work-life-balanced, and….you get it 🙂).
The pace has definitely been picking up in our development of the Shelter & Unhoused Support (SUS) Program in San Francisco. In fact, we’ve got some exciting news to share: we were recently approved by the California Department of Healthcare Services to be a distributor of naloxone (narcan)! Two hundred and four units of narcan are en route to us– huge news as we work to expand the program’s harm reduction services.
Now that we’ve been approved to give out this life-saving drug, our meal pass-outs will start to involve things like first aid supplies, safe needle disposal opportunities, condoms, HIV-, HEP- and overdose- prevention flyers, water bottles, etc… in addition the resource pamphlets once the SF batch is printed, of course! In February we participated in 12+ hours of programming through the Harm Reduction Coalition, and look forward to continuing to learn about how to expand our practices and collaborate with other orgs that provide harm reduction services in SF. I’ll also be taking an EMT course in the next six months in order to optimize the care we’re able to offer our neighbors on the streets when conducting these distributions.
Given all the harm-reduction-centric activity in the SUS Program, we took the opportunity to spend February’s online education posts on addiction and harm reduction topics. We recognize that substance use disorders and harm reduction are still largely controversial and even taboo topics in the social landscape of America. We aim to help change that– we don’t believe our neighbors who use drugs and have considerable health concerns deserve any more scrutiny or stigma than our neighbors facing heart disease, diabetes or cancer.
Mother Angela’s is fighting for a world where better health and the pursuit of happiness are accessible to all– and that makes fighting stigma an essential part of our work. To drive home our position that addiction and mental health disorders are just as medically valid as any other disease, our online education will cover heart disease for the month of march, then bounce back to another mental health disorder in April or May (most likely clinical depression in May, as May is mental health awareness month). Check out our most recent online education posts on our instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/p/C4L7sn5yI70/?img_index=1 .
Circling back to the resource pamphlets, we have some updates there as well! The Birmingham pamphlets have been finished, are being edited, and will soon be on their way to print! The pamphlets are divided into Home, Health and Healing sections, listing free and accessible resources in each area. In addition to passing them out at our soon-to-be-launched community events (and in our other programs), we’ll be sending them to the orgs listed inside the pamphlets, hoping they’ll be able to share them with their clientele too (and to thank them for being wonderful enough to list as a community resource!).
As we know, most folks at the intersection of the poverty and health crises have overlapping and comorbid needs, and often need the help of multiple NGOs and government entities. Our hard-copy pamphlets are an attempt to centralize resources in a more accessible way than the internet can provide (but no shade to online resource centers– they’re amazingly helpful for those with internet access!). The San Francisco pamphlets are nearing finalization as well, and we can’t wait to determine the most efficient way to share them through our various programs.
Now that the Birmingham pamphlets are complete, we’ve finally begun planning the first Community Event! We aim to schedule the event for late spring or early summer, and plan to enlist both contract and volunteer assistance to pull it off. Once we have a date and venue set in stone, we’ll start recruiting sponsors, collecting mutual aid, making flyers, posting them around town and advertising the event on social media. As always, we’d love your help if you happen to know of any appropriate venues, businesses/families who might like to be sponsors, or would like to volunteer for the event or flyer-distribution.
For those who aren’t familiar with our plans for mutual aid at the community events, we’ll be putting overhead toward a number of home-, health- and healing- related goods we’ll be offering for free, including items like:
Fresh produce, legumes & whole grains
Reusable water bottles
First aid kits
Pillows & blankets
Tents/ camp gear for the unhoused
Clothing items
Non-toxic cooking & cleaning supplies
Laundry detergent/ dryer balls
Diapers, wipes, genies, baby powder & baby clothes
Menstrual products
Prophylactics
Seeds, growing supplies & urban gardening manuals
Over-the-counter pain medicine & useful herbs like ginger (nausea), peppermint (pain) & lavender (anxiety)
If we can get approved in the state of Alabama to distribute naloxone in time, we’d love to include narcan amongst the mutual aid items as well, but that would necessitate securing appropriate storage, so it may be an event feature we add later. And, of course, we’ll be offering our newly-printed resource pamphlets. As a reminder, topics covered in the pamphlets range from housing help to healthcare access to healing resources like counseling, post-prison services and addiction treatment options.
The event will also feature free musical entertainment and prepared food, as well as raffle prizes, auction items, contests and a few other for-sale goods to help raise a bit more money. The primary purpose of these events, however, is to facilitate the gathering and distribution of the mutual aid items and resource pamphlets amongst our Birmingham community members, fostering trust and communication as we live into our slogan: Share Whatcha Got.
We’re hoping to have added a board member who currently lives in Birmingham by the time of the first community event, which we imagine will help us spread the word alongside the flyers. We’ve made a bit of headway in this area since our last blog post: We’re currently in discussions with candidates in the hopes to increase our size from 3 to 5 in the next few months. As always, please reach out to us if you know someone who might be a good fit! We hope to close the search as soon as possible to get more location-specific feedback and expand the perspectives of those voting on budgetary matters. See our January blog post for more details on ideal candidates: https://www.motherangelas.org/programsblog/january-recap-amp-further-program-plans .
Speaking of the budget, we still need to grow our overhead a lot to continue rolling out these programs! In addition to the grant applications we’ve sent out and specific fundraising we’ll do for the community event, we’re preparing to launch our first peer-to-peer campaign by the start of April, which we’re hoping will give us a nice cash cushion! The idea, in case you missed our last blog post, is to recruit a number of ambassadors, who will each have a fundraising goal to meet by campaign close. Research demonstrates this sort of fan-out fundraising draws more donors and higher yields than a couple reps attempting to woo the masses. So we’re crossing our fingers that it goes well! Keep an eye out for sign up forms if you’d like to participate– pending start date is April 1.
Once we have sufficient overhead, we can’t wait to get going on the Client Program and Teacher Aid & Tutoring (TAT) Program as well. In February we continued formalizing our standing in New Orleans through Louisiana state paperwork, and already have a number of contacts keeping a lookout for potential First-Families. Because we’ll need enough to cover our holistic approach to getting these families on their feet (which will likely include expensive medical needs), this program will require the most overhead prior to launch. We can’t wait to get immersed in our First Family’s intersecting issues, help them find long-term solutions to their unmet needs, and make space along the way for their pursuit of happiness.
As far as the TAT Program, we need only raise enough to hire one person for a 12-week trial of the in-class teacher aid, so we hope to begin work on that endeavor sooner rather than later. All tutors, on the other hand, will be well-vetted volunteers. Schools in San Francisco are currently being screened for highest needs.
Things are moving fast at Mother Angela’s, but we’ve never been more energized by the work. Stress usually gets the spotlight when we talk about feelings associated with getting a business of the ground, but we’d like to take a moment to thank our readers, donors, board members, consultants, friends, family, state governments and the IRS for the incredible validation too– we know our work is important and worthwhile, but it would never be possible without all your support.
So go forth, seek out better health, share whatcha got and pursue your own happiness for us; we’re rooting for you too!
