Wendy :
Wendy Stevens is the Peer Operations Coordinator with Vancouver Coastal Health’s Overdose Emergency Response Team. Wendy is also a person with lived experience around substance use, sex trade work and HIV. Much of her role is educating health care providers on topics such as; harm reduction, trauma informed care, stigma, substance use 101, how to work with people use use substances and are structurally vulnerable, she also trains peers/people who use drugs (PWUD) that are working in the overdose epidemic (more accurately; the intentional inaction around the poisoning of people who use drugs) on Naloxone, lateral violence, burnout, resiliency etc. Wendy is a proud cat mom and really hopes to learn how to roller skate one day soon…with a minimum of injury.
Leita :
Leita (she/her) is an organizer, advocate and therapist who supports folks experiencing incarceration, those impacted by policing and the criminal (in)justice systems as well as their families and loved ones. Sitting with the complexities of violence and harm, she is honoured to be a support for folks on their journeys of accountability, repair, transformation and healing. She is also a co-facilitator of Penn2Paper, a pen pal program connecting people in federal prison with community volunteers.
She comes to this work with a deep commitment to radical compassion, subverting systems and the belief that no one is disposable.