What is The Stigma Project?
Real Talk is helping Community Living organizations like BACI, posAbilites, and Kinsight get better at supporting people with intellectual disabilities who also:
- Use drugs (or previously used drugs)
- Get tested or treated for sexually transmitted infections
- Are 2SLGBTQIA+
If you get support from a community living organization in Greater Vancouver and you have experience with any of these things, we are interested in interviewing you. We want to learn what it’s been like for you to get support.
If you choose to do an interview, here’s what will happen:
Two people will interview you: Kelsey Savage and John Woods. Everything we talk about will be kept confidential – we won’t tell your staff or family what you tell us.
You can choose where we talk: at your home, at a restaurant, at a private office space, in a park… We will buy everyone a meal to eat while we chat. You can talk to us on your own, or you can have a friend, family member or staff with you if you like.
As well as buying your meal, we will pay you $100 cash. The interview should take about an hour. If it goes longer, we will pay you more.
Here’s how we will use what we learn from the interview:
The information we get from these interviews will be used to train staff. Staff will learn how to better support people. Mostly, staff will learn how to avoid accidentally making people feel awkward or uncomfortable or ashamed. When we train staff, we won’t tell them we interviewed you.
Real Talk is doing this training for the Canadian Public Health Association. They are a nonprofit organization focused on protecting the personal and community health of Canadians and people around the world. You can learn more about them at this link.
