nighttime outreach
Our nighttime outreach is for the homeless and exploited identified women within our communities. HOPE volunteers go out seven nights a week at dusk in the downtown cores of Kelowna and Vernon with supply bags, including hygiene items, snacks, warm clothing, harm reduction, and more that attend to their immediate needs. Volunteers build relationships with identified women working and/or living on the streets, give out a variety of supplies, provide emotional support through kindness and compassion, and connections to access social and health services they may need. Our street outreach team is women helping women and only accepts identified women volunteers at this time due to trauma-informed training and approach to care.
narcan/MEN’s OUTREACH team
We provide full training to our volunteers on how Narcan, anti-overdose program works. Naloxone is an anti-overdose drug for opiate users. Avid users can receive a free kit, so in the emergency of overdose, this can be administered and save lives. We also have a specialized Narcan and Men’s Outreach Team that goes out weekly, both in Vernon and Kelowna. We look for all gender expression and sexual orientation volunteers for our Narcan team, as we distribute Narcan to all genders, and shifts are separate from our nighttime outreach shifts that HOPE Outreach does on a nightly basis.
hARM REDUCTION
Harm reduction is a process that we incorporate into both Outreach and Narcan shifts. Volunteers carry injection and smoking kits, distributing to men and women. Individuals on the streets may well be using these items; therefore it is important that clean needles are supplied to prevent re-use of dirty needles. This effort supports safe injections to prevent HIV, Hepatitis C, and other medical conditions, it also in effect helps to disintegrate black market selling of clean needles where those who are using cannot afford to have clean needles.
Education & Events
HOPE Outreach is a strong advocate for homeless and exploited identified women in the Okanagan. It is important for our founder, our volunteers, and allies, to educate our community about the needs of the most vulnerable, by attending and hosting events, facilitating educational sessions, and speaking to the media. We hope to focus on amplifying the voices of these identified women we see in a way that feels safe for them. Our goal with any opportunity to support education is dismantling harmful stereotypes or judgments, and empowering our community with the tools to show up for the identified women and girls.
Volunteer Orientations
All new potential volunteers are provided with training for street-level nighttime outreach, Bad Date reporting, Narcan training, and Harm Reduction training in Kelowna and Vernon. Currently this takes the form of COVID-19 protocol-approved, online training through a series of videos. The potential new volunteer will also complete two shadowing shifts, alongside our trained volunteers, on the street. All volunteers always work in pairs. Only self-identified women can volunteer for our outreach shifts, but we accept all genders for our Narcan team.
bad date reporting
Since 2008, the “Bad Date Alert”, which was implemented to decrease and deter violence against women, provides information and resources to sex workers and exploited women to help them stay safe. HOPE Outreach collects this information from nighttime outreach shifts, or during any other times we encounter a need, and distributes to necessary service providers. Bad Date Reporting is to support the safety of women in sex work.
Our team also recommends that anyone in the community feel empowered to educate themselves on how to use naloxone, you can do so here.