Victoria, BC, June 28, 2022 − On July 9th from 1:00 to 4:00pm at the Downtown Community Center located on 755 Pandora Street, a group of experiential storytellers warmly invite you to open your heart and challenge your preconceptions at ‘Face 2 Face with Stigma’, an anti-stigma workshop. You will hear people’s journeys and be invited to share and collaborate on person-centered communication tools. Face 2 Face with Stigma (F2F) workshops are inspired, led, developed, and delivered entirely by people with lived and living experiences of homelessness, substance use and mental health disorders. They share their powerful stories to create systemic change and reduce barriers by opening discussions about stigma with people living and working in our community while providing stipend-paid opportunities for our passionate experiential storytellers. There is no charge to attend the event, although registration through Eventbrite is required: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/face-to-face-with-stigma-community-event-tickets-343074534167
Face 2 Face with Stigma is a robust and sought-after program celebrating 3 years in July 2022. It was born in July 2019 out of the idea to bring people out of the fringe and shadows of society due to stigma through storytelling at a one-time day-long workshop. The event closed with a call to action and the resounding consensus called for “more workshops for more people”. To date, the Face 2 Face with Stigma Team has presented 44 workshops and 3 conferences to audiences that include the Victoria Police Department, classes of students from universities and colleges, hospitals, services providers, and many other groups. Learn more about this program at https://victoriahomelessness.ca/f2f/.
This program is not only transformative for attendees and the broader community, but it also fosters healing and growth for team members, “over the last 3 years, I have seen the tremendous impact of Face 2 Face with Stigma workshops and witnessed a shift in the perception and understanding of those that hear our stories. Not only has F2F benefited the community, but it has also enriched the lives of the whole team by giving us purpose, meaning, and a platform to share our message. Moving forward, F2F’s goal is to continue to spread awareness for those who have been pushed to the shadows and fringe of society due to stigma.” Kay Martin, Creator of Face 2 Face with Stigma, and the Voices of Experience coordinator.
Previous workshop participants report day-to-day interactions, and their professional practice being positively impacted by the workshops:
“I hold so much gratitude for the work Face 2 Face does, it’d such an invaluable resource in our community”
“It’s not the end of the journey I know there’s more work to do, but I have a broader range of the stories that brought people to their experiences and that helps expand the scope of my own narrow worldview or my own narrow assumptions about the world”
“It’s widened the story. It’s taught me to just stop and really check in with what assumptions I have”
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The Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness (GVCEH) is a partnership of local service providers, non-profit organizations, all levels of government, and business, post-secondary, and faith communities. The GVCEH’s mission is to ensure experiences of homelessness in the Capital Region by 2030 are rare, brief, and non-recurring and that housing and supports are culturally adaptive, creative, caring, and person-centered.
For more information:
Kay Martin
Voices of Experience Coordinator
Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness
c: 250 580-2751
kmartin@victoriahomelessness.ca
