Levi Foy: Sunshine House is like “The Museum of Love”

Stuart Murray  0:00  
This podcast was recorded on the ancestral lands on Treaty One Territory, their traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and the Dene peoples and on the homeland of the Métis nation.

Amanda Logan (Voiceover)  0:19  
They This is humans on rights, a podcast advocating for the education of human rights. Here's your host, Stuart Murray.

Stuart Murray  0:30  
My guest today is the executive director of sunshine house, Levi Foy. We're gonna learn a lot about sunshine house, the great work that they do in the community. And we're going to try and spend a bit of time understanding the importance of a major program that sunshine house has amongst many, but one of the major programs they have is a program called mops, M O. P. S, which is short for mobile overdose prevention site. So on that note, Levi, foie Welcome to humans on writes. Hi, thanks

Levi Foy  1:00  
for having me.

Stuart Murray  1:01  
So Levi, you know, you're obviously very engaged in a very important initiative in the community. But you know, how did you find yourself involved in this? Did you did you go to school in Winnipeg? And are you a huge amount of Tobin? My

Levi Foy  1:15  
father's family's originally from Koochiching First Nation, which is on the border of Ontario and Minnesota, and my mom's family is from Saskatchewan. And then they converged in southwestern Manitoba and met. And I was raised in southwestern men in various communities in southwestern Manitoba. And then I went to school at the University of Winnipeg in the early 2000s. And when I was done there, I left for about seven years. And I came back to Winnipeg in 2014. And I started working at Sunshine house. So

Stuart Murray  1:44  
the seven years you went, I mean, is there something you were doing that, you know, got you engage that when you saw the opportunity at Sunshine house, it just made sense, were you doing stuff that was involved in helping others during that seven year timeframe, when you were away from Winnipeg,

Levi Foy  1:58  
I left and I went to work in Mexico for two years. And then I went to I moved to Guelph, and I was there for about a year to do my master's here, I think about 14 months, I returned back to Mexico for another six months. And then when I returned, and I was completed all my studies, I moved back home to my community to help care for my aging grandfather, who at the time, we were told he had about six months to live, but he ended up sticking around for two years. So I spent two years working back in my home community and Child and Family Services in a variety of roles. And one of the roles was to work on systems communication, and to understand some of the challenges that families were having, and reunification plans, because it was a First Nations child of family service agency. So a lot of the times family members face barriers with if they would be completing some of the requirements for family reunification. But then those systems weren't allowed to talk to each other because of personal health information protections, and all those things that we put in place that are good, in general. But sometimes we require systems to talk to one another in order to for the safety and health of everybody. I did that for a couple of years. And then you know live as a as a two spirits, queer person living in rural Ontario wasn't necessarily the best place for me not in terms of I had tons of family support. And my community was always very supportive of me. It was just I required some additional social kind of benefits. But there's not a lot of options there for like my life and other queer communities so and so when I was presented with the opportunity to work at Sunshine house, I jumped on it. And because it was something I wasn't super familiar with, I

got involved in a side project that was mapping areas in Winnipeg, where people were buying and selling sex in public spaces where people were buying and selling drugs. And then where people were men were having sex with men in public spaces. And so through that experience, in that pilot, that little project, we interacted and engaged with a lot of queer people who are substance users and who were racial, and who were indigenous or racialized, and who didn't really have places to go that weren't bars or weren't healthcare clinics. So we decided to start operating a small drop in program that ended up running twice a week and continues to run twice a week specifically for to LGBTQIA plus people in Winnipeg who really don't have a lot of places where they can build community and didn't necessarily or don't necessarily feel engaged at, you know, mainstream services like rainbow Resource Center or whatever. We do have a really positive relationship with rainbow Resource Center. But we also understand that that we work with kind of very, oftentimes very different groups, but we have lots of folks who will use both sunshine house and rainbow that was a part time job. So then I had to work elsewhere. So I spent some

Time at Main Street project and I worked in the shelter there, I also spent some time working at the University of Winnipeg, I helped with the ad home space wall study. So that was the housing first national study, and doing participant interviews with people who were engaged in that project for the follow up study, and worked at Aboriginal health and wellness. And then I've also worked, I returned back to the University of Winnipeg, and worked in the Indigenous Affairs Department for a couple of years. And so that's, that's kind of my role. And then I came on here at Sunshine house and became the executive director. And on April 1 2019. Well,

Stuart Murray  5:34  
thank you for sharing, there's a lot. You've seen a lot, you've traveled a lot, you've experienced a lot, when you just talked about your masters that you did, did you What did you do your masters in if you don't mind me asking

Levi Foy  5:45  
Latin American and Caribbean studies with history as the kind of the department that I worked closely with history, art history, so when I was living in Mexico, I developed relationships with a lot of moonphase. So that would be very similar to, to spirits, you know, in Canadian context. So folks who often who identify, particularly on the gender diverse side of the spectrum, so, and the and Bucha, is in this particular region in Wahaca. So that's a really unique place. And so one of my dear friends, I told her that I was planning on going back to school, and she gave me this really great topic. She was like, you know, people always come down, and they write stories about us, but they never ever come back and they share our stories. So can you find those, those stories and bring them back to us. So then that was really my, my project. So we, I really wanted to bring those stories back, but contextualize it in kind of a larger narrative of the way that English media, in particular has always represented Mexican, indigenous femininity as being this wholly different, kind of weird other, queer other. And so that's, that was my research project. It exists out there. But the The thing I most I learned the most about, it was just developing really strong connections with indigenous trans folks who really have done a lot of work and community built in particularly around helping their smaller communities navigate HIV, navigate, things like human trafficking, and navigating constant influx of queer refugees who might be passing through their territories, and how learning how folks are supporting one another in areas where there's not a lot of resources for these types of things.

Stuart Murray  7:30  
And so Levi, when you find yourself working, or getting involved with sunshine house, and now as you are as the executive director, I like you and I, and I'm kind of embarrassed to say, but, you know, I didn't know a lot about sunshine house, and I went on your website, and the amount of work you do in the community is unbelievable, and it's really quite important and very impressive. We're going to talk about that. But what was your introduction to Sunshine house? Was it through the projects that you just mentioned, talking about pilot projects, where you're looking where, you know, men are having sex in the city in different locations or selling drugs? Was that sort of your introduction? Or how did you find out about the good work that people are doing at Sunshine house?

Levi Foy  8:10  
That was not that that's how I, I had a friend named Lucas. And they called me one day and they said, Hey, there's this little weird woman who I think will like you. And she, she runs this organization called Sunshine house. And we've been working with them on the solvent user project. And so I think you want to her would have a really good fit. So I met her her name was Margaret Ormonde. And so she had been doing this type of work for pretty much her whole life. She had a background as a nurse, and I did a lot of research and facilitated really interesting research projects between, you know, the University of Manitoba and other institutions, particularly with folks who I guess you would call marginalized, or systems and trenched people. And so yeah, so that was my first introduction. She was like, I think you would be a good fit for this, this type of project given kind of your knowledge and firsthand experience. And so yeah, there was a team of eight of us who would walk around who went around to various parts of the city, talking to neighbors, talking to community members, where they might have seen these types of activities happening and then working, and then kind of verifying that these activities were happening by talking to folks who were who may or may not have been engaged in these activities. That's how we did it. It's sunshine houses has always been at that point in time between 2007 and 2002 1020. Really, at the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic sunshine house was this organization that kind of work to identify gaps within systems and to facilitate good relations between academic institutions where research institutions and community members who these institutions sometimes have not so great relationships with but are interested in having them participate in types of studies. So Margaret did a lot of that type of facilitation through various projects like the solvent user creation project, as well as this mapping project. So essentially in house maintained kind of three programs, or one drop in program and a Sunday brunch program, those were always the pillar. And they continued to be some of the the pillars of what we go forward with today, even in spite of all these massive changes, that's happened since COVID. So everything is centered, all of our relationship building is centered around relationships that we form, out of our drop in spaces, and then supporting people in whatever their journey might look like, going forward. And so that's kind of that's how we identify what our what we need to be doing is through what community tells us to do. We've formalized some of these processes through the establishment of community advisory circles, which are made up entirely of people who are using our programs. And then they can kind of inform us directly like what kinds of work we need to do. And that's how we were able to form the mobile overdose prevention site. It was, it was not something that we just dreamed up one day, this was iterated to us through community, particularly as we saw a lot of fluctuation in the supply that was coming into Manitoba. That was disrupted during the COVID pandemic, because, you know, borders were closed, there was not a lot of movements of people, and there was not a lot of movement of goods. And so with all of those restrictions, there was lots of different unforeseen impacts that I don't think people really took into consideration when we were doing what was necessary at that time to kind of keep the overall public health system functioning in ways that it could, at that critical, crucial time. The

Stuart Murray  11:39  
amount of stuff that you're involved in, in your background is amazingly impressive. And I'm trying to sort of take notes as we go here so that I can come back and sort of try to get some clarification on some some issues. Tell me just quickly, who started sunshine house, from your perspective? Are you aware of how the origin of sunshine House came about?

Levi Foy  11:57  
Yeah, so sunshine house was formed in the late 80s, early 90s, as a response to the lack of support that was being provided to folks during the HIV epidemic at the time and sunshine house was a coalition of folks who were looking at providing some sorts of services and supports to those people who might be at higher risk, particularly at that time came in, who might be at higher risk of contracting HIV. And so providing them with safer sex appliances, education information. So started in 1991, kind of as a tally sheet by Aid Society. And then from there, it was part of the large coalition of community organizations or the growing coalition of community organizations in the early 90s. Supporting people with who were living with HIV and AIDS. In 1999, we started the drop in programs under the under the name sunshine house, or just under a drop in programs. And then in 2001, it was became formalized in sunshine house in 2007, Callie Shiva and those services stopped and switched primarily under the umbrella of sunshine house to focus on drop in programming as opposed to doing AIDS or HIV AIDS service delivery, knowing full well that we were still retained many of those contacts but we just didn't have the capacity to provide the same types of supports and other organizations were also providing those supports at that time. Forgive

Stuart Murray  13:22  
me for asking but clarification please leave I am I gonna say it right Cal I SIB program. Ali Shiva Yeah, he uh, Kelly Sheba? I'm sorry, can you just give us a quick explanation of what is Cali Sheba? And what what does that program all about?

Levi Foy  13:35  
I don't actually know where that name came from. Because I've existed before I did. It preceded me by some time. But it was primarily to provide services for folks who were living with HIV, and AIDS. And also to provide some support for those for those people. Particularly, there was a lot of programs and support for people who were using substances who were at higher risk, particularly injection drug users, as well as supports for women. Because, you know, once we dealt with the reality is that HIV impacted all communities in various different ways. Then there was some resources and support for for women who were who would be at higher risk as well as we knew full well that people who use drugs were at greater risk of contracting because of the lack of services available and the lack of clean supplies that people needed safer sex supply, safer injections, supplies, that kind of stuff. So harm. So harm reduction, the model of harm reduction that we use was really born out of that Callie Shiva time and the experiences that we learned through supporting people navigating that very unique time in the history. And

Stuart Murray  14:43  
so one of the questions always that comes up with, you know, issues around safe injection sites, different, you know, elements that are involved with any drug, any toxicity issue at all is around the issue of the term harm reduction and For many, I think it's misunderstood exactly what it is. So I'd love from your perspective as the executive director of sunshine house, because I know one of the things you talk about is that sunshine house focuses on harm reduction, and social inclusiveness. And that is, I think, a great mandate. It's, it's a fairly straightforward and simple one. But there's a lot of complications to it. From your perspective, when people talk about harm reduction, what do you want them to understand the importance of what harm reduction means.

Levi Foy  15:29  
Whereas the simple thing about harm reduction, and to keep it real simple is just that we want people to live through the day. So we want people to be able to live tomorrow to continue to make changes in their life that they view they need to make whatever that might mean, we don't have a prescriptive type of approach to it, because everyone's journey is different. And everyone is dealing with all sorts of different, different things. But the core value in the core principle is that everyone has the right to live. And that is the fundamental principle that we should all agree on that every human beings, life is worth value. And the other thing and social inclusion is, a lot of the times that value is accentuated or exacerbated by the connections that we have with one another. And that's really key to ensuring that people are successful in the ways that they want to be successful. Not necessarily, you know, monetarily, but having good connection, healthy community healthy relationship with one another, being able to trust one another and love one another and feel loved. The other thing that's really important is in a lot of our programming is ensuring that people have something to do. So. Recreation as a form of harm reduction is really key. Because if people have things to do, and they're engaged in their environment, whether that be at Sunshine house or outside of sunshine house, you know, then they'll have desire to make choices and make decisions and informed ways that will allow them to be safe and kind of live through the day. Try to keep it simple, because that's that's really what it is. Yeah,

Stuart Murray  17:08  
I appreciate that explanation. Because I think a lot of times people get confused when they talk about harm reduction. And they talk about, you know, programs that have been set up to sort of, quote unquote, help people. I mean, it depends whose definition of health we're talking about here. But from time to time, leave, I think there's a sense that people will deal with people around the issue of harm reduction, assuming that they are already either sober or clean. And that clearly is I mean, I'm not sure if I'm using the right term here, but it's a bit of an oxymoron. I mean, you know, the reason you're looking for assistance or harm reduction is because you are not sober or clean. And part of that is, you know, making sure that you're not being judgmental on people when you're really trying to ultimately help them. And so, you know, you've seen a lot of that, but again, just I'm asking you, you know, from your perspective that you live and see this every day, Levi to maybe share your thoughts about people who look at and say, the best thing to do from a societal standpoint, you know, this is old school, but maybe not so much old school, but put them in jail, like get them off the street, you know, do this sorts of draconian kind of approach that seems to have at one point been kind of the norm. And along comes organizations like sunshine house and you're mean, you're disruptive, you're changing it, you're you're bringing, as you say, shining a light on the fact that everybody's life is important, everybody has the right to survive, everybody has the right to be here. And so what you're doing is you're providing a runway and an opportunity for those sorts of people. But, you know, you must have dealt with or maybe you continue to deal with a lot of stigma, that people sort of say, well, that's not the right thing to do. There's other ways that are more, I don't even know the right word for this, Levi, you know, just where people sort of say, well, just, you know, kind of lock them up. Right, you know, what does that mean? I mean, clearly, that's not the way to go. But I'd love from you to hear from your perspective, how you have walked through that conversation and how you continue to believe and how you continue to explain it to those people who may not have the same understanding of it as you do. Yeah,

Levi Foy  19:06  
it's tricky, because there's the all of these things are loaded with presuppositions or predispositions around what people are allowed to do, and who is worthy and who is able to do these things. And a lot of it is often tied to resources and the resources that individuals have. So, you know, we know that, like you said, the stigma around particularly poor and often indigenous people who engage in substance use, are faced with when when they do engage in these things, but it's often unfair, and it's leveled in ways that are loaded with all sorts of different other conversations and topics for conversation that you can have. I just tried to boil it down to the most kind of essential thing and the essential patterns that human beings have. And so human beings as you know, universally, there's only a few things that we can universally say as part of the human experience. Global across cultures, so some of those things would be, you know, creating components of social connection, whether that be through family and maintaining family connection through our entire lives, creating community for safety and being like community beings like that, as well as some of those other things that we universally have tried to do is try to explain our world and our relationships metaphysically, or through religion, or through ceremony and through spirituality, and accessing, using our brains and our the power of our brains to kind of, you know, figure out the purpose of being in our life. And so when you remove purpose of being from people's lives, often forcibly through things like residential schools, there's things like child welfare systems, where people no longer have real connection to individual or to community. And through all of these systems, a lot of the times it's going to take people a long time to recover, and communities a long time to recover from, from, you know, the impacts of that. And so if people aren't feeling connected in a lot of ways, you know, you're going to try to balance that out in other in other types of ways. And sometimes, a lot of the time substance uses use it. And we've seen substance use being used throughout human history, globally, like, you know, beer has existed for 1000s of years. And there's been all sorts of types of unnatural types of ways that you can kind of escape reality in in controlled, oftentimes controlled types of environments. And you know, we still have, so it's a lot of the time, I think that the work that we're trying to do is trying to really help people kind of revisit their relationships with substances so that it can be NS goes across the board, like for us to understand that, you know, substance use has been around for 1000s and 1000s. of years, for as long as human beings have been around, we have been trying to kind of explain our world, the natural world, and our mental and physical and emotional and social needs through using substances. And so it's really important that our relationship with substances is done in a healthy kind of respectful way. But we also have to understand that when everything is out of balance, and out of line, substances can be really important and good escapes. So when we're talking about when we're looking at in the the folks in my family and in my in my own community, and people that we work with every day who don't have access to ways in which they can connect, and heal from a lot of disconnection and a lot of actual pain and violence that they face, it makes a lot of sense. But we don't if we don't provide them with any kind of viable alternative. And our only alternative is, as you say, to lock people up to stigmatize people or to hope that the problem solves itself through whatever or the alternative is abstinence, we know that that's not a realistic position for so many people that we work with. All of these things can can work in conjunction or with each other, and at various different points in people's lives. So we have to think of it as kind of like providing a an ecosystem or a tapestry of support services that people can use at various points in their lives, that will support them in their journeys. And particularly, the one thing that I get challenged with that I personally can never reconcile is, you can't tell people, they can't do anything, but you don't provide them those, you know, mental health supports or cultural supports or any kind of viable options. And then thinking about it just from a standpoint of a civil society, where we do have a pretty large and robust type of support network that is, you know, supposed to be entrenched within Canadian society. It is often cheaper, and I hate this argument, but it is often more economically feasible to be supportive and preventative. And these are the types of measures that sunshine house and other community organizations are doing than it is to lock people up and or to, you know, to try to force everyone to go through the square. That might be abstinence based programming without any kind of long term mental health cultural supports attached to it. Yeah, no, I

Stuart Murray  24:06  
mean, I think part of the way society has been for for years and years and years, I mean, you've mentioned, you know, residential schools, you mentioned, you know, this issue around colonialism, you know, the the notion that if there's a problem, and the problem, of course, is it's always who decides it's the problem, you know, the greater society decides if there's a problem. And one of the solutions to that problem is just if you move somebody out of sight, then they're out of mind. And somehow, you know, there's a sensible now that's solved, and as you say, quite the opposite. I mean, I did some work with an organization, I helped raise a bit of money with an organization in Winnipeg. And one of the areas that I learned a tremendous amount with from that organization was that if you send somebody who's had a troubled upbringing, or they're struggling or they're really trying to find out who they are, and they find themselves in trouble, and the idea is, well, we'll send them off to jail. It's like Does anybody think they're gonna come out of jail as a better society better citizen or at the end, learn more things in jail. So, you know, you look at that argument. And I think that was something that I learned that was very open minded for me, you know, just understand that they are trying to find their reasons for being here. And everybody's journey is completely completely different. And trying to recognize that and support it, I think is, is what you're what you're doing at Sunshine house live, I think is is very important. When you talk about harm reduction, and helping people and knowing that some of these people are on, say, drugs that are not legal. So there's an illegal element of these drugs that you're using, and you want to work with through through harm reduction. If somebody says to you, don't you see that as a moral issue? How do you respond to that question?

Levi Foy  25:48  
If we reframe substance use as not being a criminal issue, but as a health issue, then, you know, in Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada at various different times has laid out and reaffirm this in multiple different courses, that there is no room for morality and health care services. And so health care services and health care support services are to focus on saving the individual's life should the individual wants to be saved. And so if if we think of everything that we do around substance use in that mindset, there's no room for me to be more realistic about it, because it's legally not, not my responsibility. Now, as individuals, we can make choices about whether or not we want to be engaged. So if I had a moral objection to, you know, people using illicit substances, then I can remove myself from my type of work, because it's not up to me. And the Supreme Court has made it clear that it's not up to me to decide what is right when a person is making healthcare decisions for themselves. And then the additional thing is like, what is our alternative to that person using illicit substances if they don't have access to other types of substances or other types of services that can support them?

Stuart Murray  27:04  
Let's kind of go into one of the major programs that I think sunshine house has developed. And I want to talk about your mobility overdose prevention site, which is the acronym is Mo PS mops? How did that get started? What was the importance and the the initiative behind creating mops from sunshine house,

Levi Foy  27:25  
the mobile overdose prevention site was actually initiated by work that preceded my involvement as the IDI, so I was still working on something else, but I wasn't part of that research project. It was a, what do they call a global cafe style of symposium. And it worked with folks who were using drugs and brought a whole bunch of community members who were people who were used people who use drugs, and talked about what types of things that they would like to see out of a supervised consumption site if Manitoba was to ever get on that page. And so we released the report, and in March of 2019, and iOS, I slept, I was at an acting Ed with a couple of other folks. And then April 1, when I stepped in as full time at we were released the report, and then people got got a hold of it. Nothing was going to happen because the governing party at the province at the time, though, was very adamant that this was not going to be a service that they weren't going to be exploring. And then in 2020, with the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic, the federal government also released the statement that Canada was in a dark toxicity crisis. We knew this, we knew this from our own experiences. And in Winnipeg, we were seeing people who had been using substances again, because such analysis had relationships with folks for about 30 years, a lot of those people who were longtime substance users were coming in with injuries and experiencing death or extremely negative health outcomes. And we were like, Okay, if something needs to be done. So we began working with our partners and developing strategies on how we could start moving the needle a bit to look at these types of services being involved in in Winnipeg. And such I know, everyone who works here is kind of from the community. So right now we have 44 staff and 37 of those staff were people who used our programs and services beforehand. Many of our employees are not trained in professional ways. So we're we're just kind of out there looking out for one another on a very personal interpersonal level, and trying to get people connected into more professional type services should they choose. So that's why we will looked at a mobile at the overdose prevention site model as opposed to a clinical supervision supervised consumption site type model. We have been supporting our partners like Aboriginal health and wellness in their in their development of hopefully, being able to develop a permanent supervised consumption site. And so sometimes more equipped to deal with something a little bit more personal and that feels like sunshine house. So we met with our community we established the community advisory circle made up of people who would potentially be using the site. And they really informed kind of how this should look. And then we just applied for a variety of different grants and things to, to support the establishment of this. So we had to use federal federal grants. And we were able to we were successful with a supportively exam, the NDP M, like MP here in the in Winnipeg center, who was very supportive of this project. So she was able to help advocate for this at that level, when we submitted it to Health Canada, and then they, the substance use and addiction program gave us an 18 month pilot project. So we were planning on being open, you know, about late June 2022. And then going until October 31 of last year, there was a lot of pushback, because the political climate in Manitoba wasn't the same was not again, and as I said, supportive of this type of public health intervention. But we did we were able to start going on October 29. With the mobile overdose prevention site. The plus side of that delay start was that allowed us to kind of really work with our community and developing what types of things were needed. And we started in the winter time, and it was a rough, rocky winter. So starting in late October, early November, was when we really started to operationalize. And by January of 2023, we were busy like we were busy busy. The named mobile overdose prevention site is a little bit of a misnomer, because because we are the only formal overdose prevention service in the City of Winnipeg. And again, at the guidance of our community advisory circle and the elders, it often meant means for us to be pretty stationary at the corner of Maine and Logan and Main Street project has really been super helpful in providing us that space in their parking lot. And then working with community partners to do at least one evening stop the five days a week that were open. So that includes community partners like Mount Carmel clinic, Nine Circles, community health, re outreach services north and Women's Center, West Central Women's Center, all of these folks are really telling us kind of on you know that this is this is where things are needed right now. And so we've been able to really do that. And like when I say it's been very busy, it's we've had, in the one year that we were open, we had over 16,000 people visit our sites. So when someone visits the site, they're greeted by a coffee, regardless of the day or the time of the day or the temperature, they're greeted by coffee, there was a couple of folks who will be able to kind of guide you to some stuff, they have access to harm reduction materials. So that can include clean supplies, such as clean smoking supplies, and clean injection supplies, which is really, really beneficial. Because we know that in prevention terms, if you can prevent one person from contracting HIV or in the long run, you'd be saving the health care system about a million dollars over that person's lifetime. So providing people with those types of supplies is really, really important. Also, during the pandemic, we knew that safer smoking supplies for meth is not readily available in the city. And so a lot of the times that meant people were being exploited to access these types of things. And so we wanted to kind of mitigate those opportunities for exploiting exploitation by providing people opportunity to just grab clean bubbles, they're called. And then in our then we have a smoking tents, which is like a festival tent in the summertime and then ice fishing tent, the staff aren't in the tent, while people are doing it. They're kind of outside of the tent, and they're peeking their head in every couple of minutes just to make sure everything everybody is okay. And then within that, we also wanted to make sure that people who were using drugs could be actively engaged in the project, because those are going to be that would be the most critical element to ensuring the success of the project. So we were able to also hire a bunch of folks who would be using the site to be actual employees of sunshine house, and you don't have all of the benefits and stuff associated with that. And really figuring out a way for people to not be poor. It's not be punitive, because we know that people who use drugs often face some challenges within employment, traditional employment environments where that can be difficult. So how we restructured it was just to like, okay, let's make sure that we have our core staff who can be there and operate and then if folks are available, this is how many hours a week we have for community members to work and they can kind of make their own schedule and feel supported. And then they would have a peer coordinator who is who was attached to them so that they if they needed help with housing or things like facilitating visits or facilitating health care or ID or any of that kind of stuff, they would have somebody attached. So with the Winnipeg Foundation, we were able to they were able to support that in a very small type of way. That As it got very public that 16,000 people in a calendar year in a six hour period per day or five days a week is a lot. And over 7000 of those visits were people who were using substances. So that works out to being about two people using per hour that were open or two to three people using per hour that were open. And that can include inhalations, snorting or injection of substances, as well as providing opportunities for people to test their substances. Admittedly, that piece didn't have the pickup that we initially thought, mostly because people don't have any alternatives, right. So if they've already spent what limited income they have on the substance, then they're going to have to use it regardless. So the option that people are presented with when they're there is like, well, I could test my substances, or I could just use in front of you. And either ways, I'll feel safe and supported. The other thing that's really important to know that in those 7000 times that people have used substances that are site, only 31 times that people experience an overdose. And to put that into comparison with other services, so we've been supporting the establishment of a pop up shelter in the wintertime, that would be open 20, that would be open every night in Winnipeg that's minus 10, over the wintertime from December until the end of March. And anytime it's open, you know, there's teams from sunshine house ones, just city mainstream projects in Siloam, and Salvation Army who are there supporting, we're at 12 weeks now that it's been open, there's been more overdose and drug toxicity events in that space than there has been at the overdose prevention site, in the entirety that we've been open. So what it means to me, what that indicates to everybody is that if we're providing people with the opportunity to be using in spaces where they feel safe and supported, that they'll also be making decisions that will be more beneficial to everybody. And so when we think of a test, this one overdose kind of event in a non sanctioned space, so that could be a community drop in center, a library bathroom or the bathroom at Tim Hortons or even behind like your apartment building, we think of the individual who has to first identify and respond and the trauma that they might experience by having to save somebody's life, or feel inadequately resourced, because maybe they don't have Naloxone on them, and they don't know what to do, and they can't identify what the problem is. And then they have to wait for the ambulance. And then oftentimes, an ambulance or paramedic will show up. And the WFP S has been really, really good. Those 31 times that we have had to call, they've been there pretty promptly. And we've only run into a couple of different conflictual moments. But it's been overall really well, well done. But even then, so that ties up an ambulance and a paramedic team that could be responding to a different type of call. The biggest thing that overdose prevention site has taught all of us is that when you provide people with the space and community members, and even just the minimal amount of resources that are available at mobs is people will make, you know the best decisions possible for for them. And then that turns out to be the best decisions possible for the community as a whole.

Stuart Murray  38:10  
Who has jurisdiction over ensuring that you look at safe injection sites is that a federal or provincial who has the jurisdiction to decide that you're going to move ahead on that in

Levi Foy  38:22  
Manitoba, federal, so we have a federal exemption through the Canada Health Act, that allows our staff and our community members to come into contact with illicit substances. And it it protects them from like any kind of legal liabilities that they might have. But it also lays out a lot of really strict frameworks on how we can operationalize. Manitoba is the only province with the exception, I think of New Brunswick, and I think maybe Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, who don't have provincial or territorial mechanisms in place to build overdose response strategies at the community level. So that means if you know, let's say an organization was trying to put in maybe just like a safe injection room in their clinic, because they're tired of people using their bathroom for that, they would still have to go through the federal process, whereas in BC, or in Alberta, or in Terrio, there's provincial mechanisms that are often a lot more faster and a lot more tailored to the needs of the community or the needs of that jurisdiction. We're always open to working with whatever the province provincial ruling party is in Manitoba and the Province of Manitoba and a different particularly now have a housing addictions and homelessness department and kind of facilitating this type of mechanism. And the one thing that I think was really interesting was so we were like, not scared, but we were like, Okay, this is gonna be really, really strict, but actually, in our community consultations, and in that initial report, and in what the community desired things around safety and safety for everybody in the community. So we're much stricter, as determined by the community. So for example, our community when we were developing this, and we're talking about going mobile, they were like, we can't be anywhere near where kids congregate. So that makes going to the west end pretty difficult because there's lots of playgrounds, and there's lots of schools around there. But we want to also respect the safety of everybody involved. And we want to make sure that we're not disrupting communities when we're there. And then the other thing was like our community has been really, really, it's really important, no matter where we are, we have to be responsible and leaving the neighborhood in a better way than where we got it. So like going out, and you know, cleaning up the parking lots where we're at maybe providing sharps disposal and letting folks know, like, Hey, we're going to be in your neighborhood. And if you find any needles or anything like that, you know, you can, you can drop them off here. And we'll both safely dispose of them for us. And that's worked out like we've had calls from West Broadway, and different neighborhoods and just be like, Hey, I know you have the overdose prevention site, and I found some, I found some suspicious stuff, can you would you be able to come pick it up? And because we have that exemption? We'd be like, yes, gladly, we'll gladly do that kind of stuff.

Stuart Murray  41:08  
So in this case, I mean, you've got mops, which is very much a part of the community. And as you say, 30 is established as something that is very unique, and to the City of Winnipeg, in that regard, the by just to kind of get a sense of it. Because it's mobile, if somebody in the public were to see somebody who they thought was having issues, whether it would be you know, they're overdosing or something. Is there a number they call what what's the relationship between getting a somebody who's in an area in the community who is purity in trouble, and as chump is being challenged? Or is overdosing, and the mobility, overdose prevention site mobs coming out to that that area? What how does that work? Unfortunately,

Levi Foy  41:55  
no, we're not, we don't have the capacity to respond to emergencies that are happening. And so people would rely on the WFP s and 911, if you saw someone in an active overdose or active drug toxicity event. And again, I do want to reiterate that, you know, in most of our interactions, it's been really wholly positive. And they are, they're well equipped to deal with these things, because they have been dealing with it, if they noticed that folks are consistently not able to access other services, because maybe their things are a little far for them. Or like there's some mobility, you know, there's, there's other services that would be able to support people in that kind of way, like DC SP can help folks in the downtown neighborhoods. And Main Street project also has a very mobile outreach service fan. And one of the things that we can do is like, we really want to work in collaboration with other services that already exists. So st. Connections, through the WHA also exists to provide people with access to disposal or access to clean, or new supplies. And they have a really well established route. And so you can look at and connect with them. If you're looking for just accessing those types of things, the things we can do is we can if people call and we are able to be staffed and out that night, we can come and do some drug checking for you, if you wanted to do that. If people are noticing, like right now, our jurisdiction or our guidelines, we can go as far as far west as polo Park, we can go as far north as kind of Inkster, if you're thinking of going to a circle and going into St. Boniface Osbourne, and then kind of in that circle area, we can kind of go all around there. But we're really only super mobile in that capacity right now, because of funding constraints. And because of the lack of other services only on Thursday, Friday, Saturday evenings, after 630. And we've only been able to really launch that this winter, again, thanks to support from the Winnipeg Foundation, who, who have really, really stepped up to help us ensure that we're able to provide this while we're in this kind of extreme challenge of October 31, we were possibly going to have to shut down.

Stuart Murray  43:59  
So Levi, how long have you been in the chair as executive director of sunshine house? It'll be five years on April 1. Okay, perfect. Congratulations. And if you were to just to say, you know, put your put your crystal ball out in front of you for a second Levi foyer and say, Where do you see sunshine house in the next five years? What would you like to see one of the major steps, the positive steps that could be taken under your leadership in your team? I mean, it's a team effort. But just from your perspective,

Levi Foy  44:24  
whatever happens in five years, my honest to god hope would be that we don't see 17,000 people a year at the mobile overdose prevention site, and there's more appropriate services available for people. What we're doing right now is great. And we have such a wonderful team who was able to kind of start this conversation and really do this but we're at a point now where people require things that we can't provide and so we're we're doing our best and it's it's a BandAid on a on a massive wound. So hopefully we're a lot more mobile hopefully, we're able to transition some of our really experienced team into other into leadership positions in a formal site that wouldn't necessarily be sunshine house. And then also in five years, it would be really nice to go back to some of the actual like a lot of the preventative stuff and doing a lot more recreational programming and not having 33,000 visits in a year. Like, that's, that's nice to be able to have that kind of contact, but you can't really do a lot of relational support. But at that high capacity, we're doing it now because everything is in constant flux. And we're seeing a lot of the impacts of various different things that are beyond our control, housing crisis, climate crisis, all of these things that are really contributing to people's stress, anxiety and ability to kind of cope in the day to day life.

Stuart Murray  45:43  
So Levi, thank you so much for your time. i It's been an education for me just to listen to your personal journey, but the journey of sunshine house and the great work that they continue to do in the community. If somebody was listening to this, and they said, Hey, I'd like to get involved, I'd like to help out, what would they do?

Levi Foy  46:00  
Go on our websites, or visit our Instagram page, it's probably our most active one. So the website is just sunshine house, WP g.org. And then a sunshine house WP CI on Instagram. And they can reach out that way. We're really fortunate as an organization that we've always kind of retained a communications person, which is a real luxury in the nonprofit world. So Jenny is just fantastic at kind of fielding all of those initial contacts and really getting people connected to who they need to be connected with. So that's really, really great. Where are you going, you know, give us a call or visit our website.

Stuart Murray  46:37  
I'll put the website in the Instagram stuff, all the social stuff, leave I'll put that into into the show notes of this episode. But again, just thank you Levi Foy Executive Director, Sunshine house, thank you very much for taking some time to just speak to me on this. So humans Alright, podcast. Yeah, it's

Levi Foy  46:53  
been great. Thanks a lot.

Matt Cundill  46:53  
Thanks for listening to humans on rights. A transcript of this episode is available by clicking the link in the show notes of this episode. Humans on rights is recorded and hosted by Stuart Murray, social media marketing by Buffy Davey music by Doug Edmund. For more, go to human rights hub.ca produced and distributed by the sound off media company