Needles, Volunteers
and the Morning After
Block Party volunteers clean up the Whiteaker
BY LAETITIA BÉRAUD
W
hen many residents of the Whiteaker are
sound asleep recovering from Block Party,
volunteers will gather Sunday, Aug. 4, to
clean up after the event. “We try to have
the neighborhood look cleaner than it did
before the party,” says Zoe Gadsby, the event coordinator.
“It’s really hard to get volunteers the next day.” The work
of the volunteers at the Block Party cleanup points to an
even bigger community effort: picking up needles.
The streets of the Whit will be fi lled with all sorts of
party vestiges — during the Whiteaker Neighborhood’s
last cleanup in June, volunteers found, among other
things, around 200 stray needles. Residents organized the
cleanup, and the HIV Alliance was among the volunteers.
The HIV Alliance’s mission is to support individuals
living with HIV/AIDS and prevent new HIV infections.
These 200 needles are a drop in the ocean: Last year, the
HIV Alliance collected around 400,000 needles through
drop boxes and its needle exchange program in 12
counties in Oregon.
“Those 400,000 used needles that we collected, that’s
400,000 potential infections that we prevented,” says
Paul Homan, the prevention assistant manager and men’s
community liaison at the HIV Alliance.
The needle exchange program doesn’t just provide
one new needle for every stray needle. Running fi ve
days a week in different locations throughout the city,
the program also provides safer injection and safe sex
supplies, wound care and referrals to drug and alcohol
detox and treatment.
Getting rid of these stray needles is not only an
individual benefi t for those using it, it is also for the
community as a whole, Bree Nicolello, the PR coordinator
at the HIV Alliance, explains. On average, an addicted
person injects a thousand times a year. “That’s a thousand
chances to risk HIV or another blood-borne disease, and
that’s also a thousand chances for a child playing in the
river to stab on a dirty needle,” she says.
Gadsby says they are down 30 volunteers compared to
last year. To join the team, help clean the Whiteaker and
receive a shirt and beer tickets, just show up at Ninkasi any
time after 8 am or email whitblockvolunteer@gmail.com
with questions. The cleanup lasts until the neighborhood is
cleaner than it was before. ■
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eugeneweekly.com • A ugust 1, 2013
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