Community mobilisation | Peer workers at the heart of the response

In this video we will hear from Mat Southwell why and how peerworkers need to be at the heart of the response. As you have heard throughout the course, and as emphasized by many guidelines and documents; peer work is essential to do good harm reduction.

It is not about cheap or convenient workers, it is a core component of an effective harm reduction approach. However, beyond acknowledging this, how goes one about doing this right? There is no ‘one-fits-all model’ for every context, but in this video Mat will guide us through some core values that, we believe, will need to be upheld as minimum standards.

This video also features an animated video, capturing some of the outcomes of a workshop Mat has led with Médecins du Monde (MdM). It features the core values MdM aims to uphold.

Optional

We highly recommend watching the three video’s attached hereunder. They feature “a day in the life of a peerworker” from amazing and inspiring peers, working on the frontline of harm reduction in Afghanistan, Myanmar and Tanzania.

Frontline Aids and Coact created a helpful tool on how to do include peer workers in a harm reduction program with people who use drugs. You can download it here below, or follow this link.

The second part of the video above included an animated video, if you would like to use the animated video separately, you can click on this link.

We can highly recommend a simular animated video, this time from a more recent global peer work consulations workshop. You can find this here.

If you would like to dive deeper into where we stand today with peerwork peer involvement of people who use drugs in low- and middle-income countries, you will find an article hereunder. You can download it here below, or follow this link.