The Work We Do
Peer Counseling and Support
Badilika Uishi staff come to their work with years of lived experience and a willingness to share what they’ve learned to comfort and lift up others in similar situations. Staff provide support for those who want to stop using drugs, counseling focused on safety and well-being, and even grief counseling for those who have lost loved ones to drugs or crime.
Connections to Health Care
Badilika Uishi’s staff are reliable escorts, trusted liaisons, and even a provisional ambulance service. They are called in to make sure community members are able to get to clinics, doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies. For example:
- A doctor call staff to make sure their drug-using patients don’t forget to come in for their HIV medication
- A drug user is embarrassed to go to the clinic alone to get his skin infection treated
- A community member needs to get to the hospital after an act of violence
Community Education
Staff provide workshops to make sure community members have critical health information to protect their well-being and to encourage healthy behavior. Educational sessions are provided anywhere people gather, including drug dens and garbage dumps where substance users and sex workers may be living. Topics include how to use Narcan, drug use prevention, condom usage, and self-care for sex workers.
Supporting Basic Needs
Since losing their physical center two years ago to land developers, Badilika Uishi has provided a community-based case management and outreach model, bringing resources to directly to people in need.
In addition to these services, Badilika Uishi also pays school fees for children of some program participants, distributes food to vulnerable families, and contributes to housing expenses for people working on abstinence based recovery. As a mutual aid community, Badilika Uishi also helps participants come together for joint income-generating activities, including harvesting eggs from Badilika Uishi’s chickens, making beadwork, and providing laundry services.
Community Participation
Too often, people view drug users and sex workers as “throw-aways”, people who are more likely to drain energy from a community than to contribute. Badilika Uishi upends that expectation by getting participants involved in community projects as a way to re-establish their reputations as valued members of society. This includes weekly clean-ups of empty lots to dispose of used syringes, community beautification projects, and volunteering after floods and fires.
