ID: HR19-1471

Presenting author: Aura ROIG

Presenting author biography:

Aura Roig is Director of Metzineres. She holds a Master in Criminology and Legal Justice Sociology. Activist with a vast trajectory as international advisor on drug policy with feminist perspective, as well as designing, implementing and evaluating Risk and Harm Reduction initiatives towards people who use drugs.

Metzineres. Environments of Shelter for Womxn Who Use Drugs Surviving Violences (Barcelona)

Aura ROIG, Aura Roig

Issue
Women who Use Drugs Surviving Violences (WUDSV) hardly ever enter or adhere to health and social care systems. Lack of optimal options, pervasive access barriers and inherent institutional gaps exacerbate control mechanisms, inequalities, social injustice and exclusion, that are also rooted in prejudice, stigma and discrimination, which in turn keep on manufacturing denial of their rights. Metzineres welcomes all women that feel alluded, devising and adapting compassionate responses to their complex and changing realities, no matter how each one manages drug use or experiences violences.
Setting
Metzineres is a bold proposition that started in Barcelona on June 2017. Not pretending to enounce an exhaustive or all-inclusive list, emphasis is put on reaching women with multiple, simultaneous and intertwined social variables that position their existence: homelessness, young, older adult, functional diversity, migrant, LGBTIQ+, sex work and/or survival sex, imprisonment, physical and/or mental health disorders.
Project
Metzineres. Environments of Shelter for Womxn who Use Drugs Surviving Violences is the first integrated harm reduction program exclusively for women in Spain. From holistic and individualized scopes tailored to the particularities of anybody, it offers direct and immediate access to flexible proposals in accordance with women´s expectations, disquietudes, curiosities, interests and needs. Throughout an innovatively daring grassroots intervention model, unfolded in Environments of Shelter, sustained by community-based strategies anchored in human rights and gender mainstreaming, that prove reliable, pragmatic, cost-effective, where every woman is a protagonist.
Outcome
The transcendence of around 4425 accompaniments undertaken by Metzineres, committing to heartwarmth the wellbeing of currently more than 130 courageous women attended, has shown after just one year of implementation extraordinary results, overwhelming our best expectations of success.