Are you ready to explore different avenues of harm reduction?
Welcome to our course on Harm Reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean! Harm reduction in the region comes from a particular history, with different core problems and principles, and novel ways to respond to them. Understanding the different contexts and needs for harm reduction practices is a crucial step in creating holistic interventions tailored to specific regions and communities.
Join us on this course as we dive deeper into the role of harm reduction outreach worker. This course equips you with the right tools to understand the history of Latin American and Caribbean harm reduction, the implications of the War on Drugs and colonisation, and the variety of broad-spectrum interventions that can be applied for destigmatisation and increased quality of life for people who use drugs.
This course is crafted to cover a broad spectrum of harm reductionists, welcoming participants at all stages of experience; from novices to accomplished professionals in the field.
A taste of what we'll cover
Criminalisation and Human Rights
This section encourages you to consider the history of drug policy in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the events that led it to be shaped that way. It discusses the harm that penal drug policies can cause to a community. How does this affect drug policy today, and what can be changed?
Decolonisation
This module investigates the basis pillars that harm reduction is based on and how these pillars themselves often come from a Western perspective. How can harm reduction be decolonized and contextualized for the particular issues of a specific region? How do we center the people receiving services?
Broad-Spectrum Harm Reduction
This chapter addresses new forms of interventions that are more applicable to the Latin American and Caribbean region. It introduces harm reduction not as an idea limited to treatment, but as a social justice movement that prioritises basic needs and community care. How can we shift harm reduction interventions to be more aware of their place in broader human rights movements?