Day of Action 2018
City: Bratislava, Trencin
Organisations: Odyseus
The events occurred in Bratislava, in the area called “Pentagon”. Pentagon is known as the only open drug scene in Bratislava and the “dangerous” zone. There are violent conflicts at daily basis. People who use drugs from this area suffer from stigmatisation more than people who use drugs from other neighbourhoods, because of the open drug scene, poverty, health and social problems they have to deal with on daily basis. The third event was at the Pohoda Festival – the biggest festival in Slovakia, which was held in Trencin from 5th until 8th of July.
Odyseus organized 3 events – one for public and people who use drugs and another one for its clients only (people who use drugs). The last one was for the festival attenders (the festival has capacity around 30 000 people).The first event was held on 26th of June and Odyseus organised a big cleaning of the neighbourhood with workers of Odyseus, people who use drugs and volunteers. There was a paid advertisement on Facebook about this event and there will be also article about the campaign in local newspaper and in the monthly magazine made by Odyseus and distributed to our clients.The people who use drugs received a remuneration – sterile needles, purchase vouchers and refreshments. The second event was held on 28th of June in the contact center of Odyseus. Odyseus invited people who use drugs to attend a seminar/focus group where drug policies were discussed and the issues Slovakia faces. During this seminar Dominika Jasekova, the statutatory representative of Odyseus had a presentation about the Support. Don’t Punish campaign. Videos were shown from all over the world from the previous year of the campaign. Odyseus has a stall in this festival and provided counselling about safer sex and safer drug use. Apart from that, every day, someone else from the staff wore a t-shirt from Support. Don’t punish to encourage awareness and support.
