New and existing groups strive to reduce stigma at International Overdose Awareness day

Aug 29, 2019 | 6:00 AM

Once homeless and living on the streets of Vernon for two years, Shane Gallyn and his wife Joanne sat at a table outside the Upper Room Mission Wednesday; sharing their story.

“We want to stop the stigma and we want our brothers and sisters to stop dying,”Gallyn told Vernon Matters.

The husband and wife duo are the co-founders of VEPAD, an organization that launched six months ago that stands for Vernon’s entrenched population against discrimination.

“My biggest thing is not being painted with the same brush as everyone else,” Gallyn said adding that the push to start an organization began last year while they were living in Becker Park.

“My wife had to go to the washroom and she went to the gas station and they wouldn’t let her until she bought something, the place that we spent three – four hundred dollars a month eating in, and right then and there I had enough,” Gallyn said.

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Joined with other street entrenched members of VEPAD, their participation outside the Upper Room Mission Wednesday was all part of International Overdose Awareness day- a day that is normally recognized internationally on Aug. 31.

The event was put on by Interior Health and the Upper Room Mission with the goal of educating people on what is available to help combat the overdose crisis, and to reduce stigma.

“The people that we are losing in Vernon are sons, and daughters, and mothers and fathers, and husbands, and wives, and cousins, neighbors and co-workers they are people that are from this community, and so with stigma being attached and labeling somebody and creating this idea that they are less than we are holding back on any positive conversations that we can have,” said Josh Winquist, Community Liaison with the Upper Room Mission.

The latest statistics from the B.C Coroner’s service show that Vernon has had seven Fentanyl detected deaths so far this year.

Allison Houweling of Turning Points Collaborative’s Cammy Lafleur street outreach group says they are doing what they can to deliver life saving Naloxone kits to communities throughout the North Okanagan.

“We do outreach, we do work with Interior Health as well to try and distribute Naloxone, we go to Enderby , we go to Lumby, we go to the food banks their and we have a table of Naloxone kits, and people might be nervous to ask for them because of stigma, but if we put them at the end of the hallway they go,” said Houweling.

The event took place from 11 a.m. to 3p.m. and guests were treated to a BBQ and the opportunity to win prizes.

by Tiffany Goodwein

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