Meet our Grantees
Southside Harm Reduction Services provides supplies to reduce the spread of disease, distributes naloxone to reverse opioid overdoses, and refers people to health care, and social services.
Jack:
My name is Jack Martin. I am the executive director of Southside Harm Reduction Services.
Southside Harm reduction services is an organization that promotes the health and wellbeing of people who use drugs in Minneapolis. Our goals are to reduce overdose deaths and prevent the transmission of HIV and other infectious diseases related to drug use through a harm reduction framework.
Harm reduction is really basically meeting people where they’re at. Not everyone is ready to stop drug use, and so we support people wherever they are in their use, in their journey.
So that means having Naloxone, which reverses overdose, opioid overdoses on hand. It means knowing how to inject. It means having safe disposal. It means being connected to resources and we try to provide a stigma-free environment.
Constellation’s support is vital to the work that we do. Having funds that are able to be flexible allows us to keep core staff on who’ve built up really strong relationships with folks that we work with. It allows us to buy things that grants won’t allow like sterile syringes and other supplies. And allows us to bridge the inconsistent funding of grants and government contracts.
So it’s essential to the work that we do.
People often think of harm reduction as like enabling drug use or have lots of misconceptions about it. Harm reduction, when it’s done right, provides access to services including treatment, including healthcare, and other services. And the only thing that harm reduction is enabling is keeping people alive.
Learn more about Constellation’s grantee partners at constellationfund.org/grantees.