Street Work

Providing sterile injection material… And warm human relations

Cactus’ street workers walk the whole downtown area in order to reach persons who live on the street. While some of them have chosen the street in the hope of improving their fate, others simply had no other choice.

Street workers go out of their way to reach directly, in their own living environment, the persons who live on the street or steadily hang out in certain bars, squats and so on. These people are often excluded of, or have broken their ties with society or institutions, including their families. The worker’s objective is to establish meaningful bonds with these people in order to accompany them on the path towards a happier lifestyle and increased autonomy, even true emancipation. Workers use an approach based on harm reduction, more humane and better adapted to the needs of the target populations.

By acting as coaches rather than leaders, street workers are just as present at celebration time as they are when times get tough. They are there to propose choices of actions that can be initiated, while explaining the advantages and drawbacks of each one.

Cactus street workers cover the downtown core during the night and the South-centre neighborhood in the morning and the evening, reaching sex trade workers, young marginal people and often older homeless people, squeegees, drugs and injection drug users, drifters from out of town, drug dealers and, to summarize, anyone for whom the street means more than a simple path to get somewhere.