[Music]
so before we start I’d like to tell you
all a brief story I’d like you to think
about where you were in 1998 maybe you
were getting married having your first
child graduating from high school or
college this is rich in 1998 rich was
homeless prostituting on the streets
smoking crack rich was a male sex worker
which is a concept that’s foreign to
many people but the thing is rich was
not the only one so I’m the executive
director of an organization called
project Weber Inu we are a merger of two
organizations project Weber and project
renew serving sex workers and high-risk
men and women in Rhode Island and so the
heart of our work is utilizing a peer
based model where the men and women who
do this critical work once walked in the
shoes that our clients now wear so
people will often ask me the first
question they often ask me is who are
your clients what do they look like what
are their needs are their challenges and
so I always say that our clients do not
look like this and in fact our clients
are all ages all races and ethnicities
all genders and sexualities 80% of our
clients have been homeless within the
last year 70% had incarceration
histories 15% are HIV positive and the
vast majority of the rest are at very
high risk for HIV through intravenous
drug use and condomless sex the majority
of clients have helped mental health
diagnosis and many clients fall into all
of these categories at once so listen to
the way that I have described our
clients and talked about them by only
what they lack so I’m here to talk to
you about the idea today that this is
not all of who they are this is not all
that defines them their histories their
past very much make the people that they
are today but they are not permanently
limited by those paths
how can I know that how can I be so
hopeful as to believe that because I
direct an organization which is founded
on the principle of every individual to
succeed and the power of those pasts in
those histories and pushing and shaping
forward their success so today I want to
talk to you about the idea that someone
can use their past to create a new
future for themselves and others and
specifically I want to talk about the
ways in which Pierce staff use the very
same skills and behaviors that they once
used in negative ways to create positive
outcomes for our clients
this is our staff so I’m gonna tell you
the stories of two of our staff members
Lisa and rich their stories illustrate
the very real obstacles facing people as
a result of a past of homelessness
incarceration sex work but more
importantly their stories illustrate the
path the power of that past in creating
new futures for clients so Lisa was
hustling on the streets of Pawtucket in
Central Falls for thirteen years she
hustled drugs selling and using she
hustled stacks prostituting on the
streets
she was the bane of the existence of the
Pawtucket and Central Falls police they
called her the Road Runner because they
spent their careers chasing her around
and sometimes even catching her and so
between 2006 and 2014 13 she is met on
the streets over and over by project
renew tear staff they give her condoms
clean water clean clothes basic needs
and they asked her to come into the
office and get an HIV test and she gets
the HIV test and they say you know we
have other services would you be
interested in getting into substance
abuse treatment and she’s not and so the
staff let her know when she’s ready the
door is always open
so in 2014 Lisa stops using so she’s
bored and she’s looking to keep her mind
occupied with positive things so she
doesn’t have time to think about using
again
so she comes into the office to
volunteer for a year and as always
happens when you do the next right thing
a job opens up so Lisa’s hired Hearst
for a few hours a week and then it grows
to almost half time so she’s a peer case
manager and she’s working now along
stuck working to serve the women that
she once hustled alongside so she goes
to training after training she becomes
an arc and train-the-trainer than an HIV
and Hep C test her then she becomes a
community health worker and she’s
learning and growing and she’s a
resource for so many men and women on
the streets of Pawtucket and Central
Falls she gets married she has a
relationship again with our family and
children she gets her license back after
16 years which she was very excited
about me telling you all so one day and
he said I go to a meeting with the Chief
of Police of Pawtucket in Central Falls
in the chief’s office they’re longtime
partners of ours and we sit down across
from this big table from them and they
realize who she is and their eyes sort
of widen and they tell the story of the
Road Runner and everyone laughs
including Lisa but it’s a true moment
for her to save her after a decade of
high of running from these men she’s
sitting across the table from them in
some ways as an equal she’s advising
them on how to reduce arrests in their
cities and how to refer clients to us
rather than continuing the never-ending
cycle of incarceration and degradation
so she is an expert in many so in many
ways more so than the police and this is
a transformative shift in power for
somebody who’s seen as less than for
most of her life
she is changing the lives of clients and
changing the minds of law enforcement
who might occasionally start to believe
so and so will never change
Lisa is using her past to create a new
future for clients on the streets of
Pawtucket and Central Falls so now I’m
going to tell you another story
this is a story rich we saw his picture
earlier this is rich Holcomb who is the
founder of project Weber so rich was 14
years old when he started hustling on
the streets homeless smoking crack doing
heroin
jumping in and out of cars for many
years in 2007 richest story took a
different turn rich was diagnosed with
HIV but rather than causing him to want
to give up on his life Rich’s HIV
diagnosis inspired him to want to change
lives to save lives and to advocate for
a population that he saw as being at
risk forgotten and ignored so rich
Ghana’s recovery and he began handing
out condoms and his clean needles on the
streets of Providence after years of
doing this he began gathering data on
the needs of male sex workers in
Providence and he presented this data to
the Rhode Island Department of Health
and in 2013 after years of advocacy the
Department of Health finally funded him
to open the country’s first drop-in
center from ill sex workers so the key
is that it was Rich’s HIV diagnosis and
his willingness to live openly as a
person with HIV that caused so many
doors to open for him rich used the
narrative of his past to demonstrate to
funders and health administrators about
the importance of his work and more
importantly enrich’d used the narratives
pass to let other male sex workers know
that they were no longer invisible so as
of today this is rich now so as of today
the Weber drop-in center has seen 236
male sex workers walked through the
doors and it remains one of only a few
drop-in centers in the world for this
population the renew offices primarily
serving women in Pawtucket and
Providence have seen over 800 clients
walk through the doors so Rhode Island
is not unique in these problems men and
women exists like this in every city
across the country and in every city
across the world but the way
that we have chosen to address them and
the fact that an organization like this
that is peer-led exists to advocate for
this underserved population makes us
unique and it’s something that Rhode
Island can be very proud of
so through this work I’ve learned that
the very things that make someone a
skilled hustler can make them a skilled
health outreach worker so in a peer
model a person can use those skills to
scam or to hustle or they can use those
same skills as a leader and as a
charismatic person to inspire as a
recovery coach or to facilitate a
support group so who better to connect
someone to HIV care than someone who’s
HIV positive and was once out of care
themselves who better to train someone
on the street to use narcan than someone
whose own life was once saved by narcan
who better to run support groups for
male sex workers and a hormone male sex
worker who got out of the life and
became an advocate we have a transgender
outreach project that we just started
last year and this project once again
has shown us that the power of people
seeing themselves reflected in the staff
cannot be understated for a client to
walk through the doors and to see a
trans woman of color or a gay man whose
public about his HIV status or a latina
survivor of sex trafficking and see
themselves it’s life-changing so the
question that I’ve often received for
the past dozen or so years is how did
you get involved in this work and the
implicit question is are you appear and
so people are so curious as to why
somebody who does not look like the
stereotype of a sex worker or a person
who’s experienced homelessness or HIV
would dedicate their professional career
and in some ways their life to this
population and so my story is that I was
working in pawtucket in the Barton
Street neighborhood on the border of
Pawtucket and Central Falls and the
neighborhood had identified prostitution
as an issue
they wanted to address and we perhaps
naively thought that we could make an
impact and so we started with a core
group of community partners and we hired
one part-time peer staff person we had
$15,000 budget that first year and so
little did we know that 12 years later
we would grow to an organization that is
10 staff people and 20 times the budget
so although I am NOT a peer I have a
role to play I’ve always believed in
justice for marginalized populations and
it’s been one of the driving forces in
my life since I was very small and I
think my parents for that guidance and
so I believe my role is to support and
guide the work of these incredible men
and women as they save lives and change
the world
so to all of you here who might say okay
how can I help
I’m not a peer how can I help a peer
organization I don’t I’m not in
substance abuse recovery how can I help
people who are in recovery I would say
three things first what is your
strengths what is your history and how
can you use that to help an organization
like ours or to help clients like ours
if you are an accountant you can use
your skills your counting skills and
save and volunteer in an organization
like ours and save us an enormous amount
of money money that we can invest back
in our clients if you are a young person
with a huge social media following you
can host a drive a fundraiser and
underwear drive a toilets use drive and
donate the proceeds to our clients if
you are a teacher like my mother and you
are you can help us with to provide
tutoring for low literacy clients which
my mother has done for the last two and
a half years so secondly I would say how
can I see others from a strengths-based
perspective so if I spent all day
lamenting the fact that my staff person
Sally does
not have computer skills I might miss
the fact that Sally is universally
beloved and knows everyone in Providence
so if I simply pair Sally up with a
young intern to capture our efforts on
the computer I have the best of both
worlds and likewise if I felt frustrated
with frequently absent bill who has a
lot of doctor’s appointments I might
miss the fact that bills doctor’s
appointments give him the day-to-day
perspective that we need and when
working with people with HIV and working
to implement change and advocacy for
people living with HIV so these are not
merely odd examples these are everyday
choices that we make when we work in
service of marginalized populations and
finally when asking why people do the
things they do why they make seemingly
unsafe and destructive choices we need
to ask ourselves need to look deeply at
issues systemic issues such as racism
and poverty and homophobia and ask
ourselves what can we do to remedy these
issues and not simply the issues that
can be fixed with a band-aid because
when we work together to remedy those
deeper issues we will create a better
future for peers clients you me everyone
so in the beginning I asked you to think
about where you were in 1998 so now it
is 2017 and I’m here on stage and you’re
here in the audience watching this talk
but I’m not here by myself I’m here as a
member of a team a group of people
incredible people doing incredible work
every single day and so I’d like to
bring them on stage with me and their
past and their hard work have led them
to this moment
receiving applause in front of a
thousand people
[Applause]
so before we start I’d like to tell you
all a brief story I’d like you to think
about where you were in 1998 maybe you
were getting married having your first
child graduating from high school or
college this is rich in 1998 rich was
homeless prostituting on the streets
smoking crack rich was a male sex worker
which is a concept that’s foreign to
many people but the thing is rich was
not the only one so I’m the executive
director of an organization called
project Weber Inu we are a merger of two
organizations project Weber and project
renew serving sex workers and high-risk
men and women in Rhode Island and so the
heart of our work is utilizing a peer
based model where the men and women who
do this critical work once walked in the
shoes that our clients now wear so
people will often ask me the first
question they often ask me is who are
your clients what do they look like what
are their needs are their challenges and
so I always say that our clients do not
look like this and in fact our clients
are all ages all races and ethnicities
all genders and sexualities 80% of our
clients have been homeless within the
last year 70% had incarceration
histories 15% are HIV positive and the
vast majority of the rest are at very
high risk for HIV through intravenous
drug use and condomless sex the majority
of clients have helped mental health
diagnosis and many clients fall into all
of these categories at once so listen to
the way that I have described our
clients and talked about them by only
what they lack so I’m here to talk to
you about the idea today that this is
not all of who they are this is not all
that defines them their histories their
past very much make the people that they
are today but they are not permanently
limited by those paths
how can I know that how can I be so
hopeful as to believe that because I
direct an organization which is founded
on the principle of every individual to
succeed and the power of those pasts in
those histories and pushing and shaping
forward their success so today I want to
talk to you about the idea that someone
can use their past to create a new
future for themselves and others and
specifically I want to talk about the
ways in which Pierce staff use the very
same skills and behaviors that they once
used in negative ways to create positive
outcomes for our clients
this is our staff so I’m gonna tell you
the stories of two of our staff members
Lisa and rich their stories illustrate
the very real obstacles facing people as
a result of a past of homelessness
incarceration sex work but more
importantly their stories illustrate the
path the power of that past in creating
new futures for clients so Lisa was
hustling on the streets of Pawtucket in
Central Falls for thirteen years she
hustled drugs selling and using she
hustled stacks prostituting on the
streets
she was the bane of the existence of the
Pawtucket and Central Falls police they
called her the Road Runner because they
spent their careers chasing her around
and sometimes even catching her and so
between 2006 and 2014 13 she is met on
the streets over and over by project
renew tear staff they give her condoms
clean water clean clothes basic needs
and they asked her to come into the
office and get an HIV test and she gets
the HIV test and they say you know we
have other services would you be
interested in getting into substance
abuse treatment and she’s not and so the
staff let her know when she’s ready the
door is always open
so in 2014 Lisa stops using so she’s
bored and she’s looking to keep her mind
occupied with positive things so she
doesn’t have time to think about using
again
so she comes into the office to
volunteer for a year and as always
happens when you do the next right thing
a job opens up so Lisa’s hired Hearst
for a few hours a week and then it grows
to almost half time so she’s a peer case
manager and she’s working now along
stuck working to serve the women that
she once hustled alongside so she goes
to training after training she becomes
an arc and train-the-trainer than an HIV
and Hep C test her then she becomes a
community health worker and she’s
learning and growing and she’s a
resource for so many men and women on
the streets of Pawtucket and Central
Falls she gets married she has a
relationship again with our family and
children she gets her license back after
16 years which she was very excited
about me telling you all so one day and
he said I go to a meeting with the Chief
of Police of Pawtucket in Central Falls
in the chief’s office they’re longtime
partners of ours and we sit down across
from this big table from them and they
realize who she is and their eyes sort
of widen and they tell the story of the
Road Runner and everyone laughs
including Lisa but it’s a true moment
for her to save her after a decade of
high of running from these men she’s
sitting across the table from them in
some ways as an equal she’s advising
them on how to reduce arrests in their
cities and how to refer clients to us
rather than continuing the never-ending
cycle of incarceration and degradation
so she is an expert in many so in many
ways more so than the police and this is
a transformative shift in power for
somebody who’s seen as less than for
most of her life
she is changing the lives of clients and
changing the minds of law enforcement
who might occasionally start to believe
so and so will never change
Lisa is using her past to create a new
future for clients on the streets of
Pawtucket and Central Falls so now I’m
going to tell you another story
this is a story rich we saw his picture
earlier this is rich Holcomb who is the
founder of project Weber so rich was 14
years old when he started hustling on
the streets homeless smoking crack doing
heroin
jumping in and out of cars for many
years in 2007 richest story took a
different turn rich was diagnosed with
HIV but rather than causing him to want
to give up on his life Rich’s HIV
diagnosis inspired him to want to change
lives to save lives and to advocate for
a population that he saw as being at
risk forgotten and ignored so rich
Ghana’s recovery and he began handing
out condoms and his clean needles on the
streets of Providence after years of
doing this he began gathering data on
the needs of male sex workers in
Providence and he presented this data to
the Rhode Island Department of Health
and in 2013 after years of advocacy the
Department of Health finally funded him
to open the country’s first drop-in
center from ill sex workers so the key
is that it was Rich’s HIV diagnosis and
his willingness to live openly as a
person with HIV that caused so many
doors to open for him rich used the
narrative of his past to demonstrate to
funders and health administrators about
the importance of his work and more
importantly enrich’d used the narratives
pass to let other male sex workers know
that they were no longer invisible so as
of today this is rich now so as of today
the Weber drop-in center has seen 236
male sex workers walked through the
doors and it remains one of only a few
drop-in centers in the world for this
population the renew offices primarily
serving women in Pawtucket and
Providence have seen over 800 clients
walk through the doors so Rhode Island
is not unique in these problems men and
women exists like this in every city
across the country and in every city
across the world but the way
that we have chosen to address them and
the fact that an organization like this
that is peer-led exists to advocate for
this underserved population makes us
unique and it’s something that Rhode
Island can be very proud of
so through this work I’ve learned that
the very things that make someone a
skilled hustler can make them a skilled
health outreach worker so in a peer
model a person can use those skills to
scam or to hustle or they can use those
same skills as a leader and as a
charismatic person to inspire as a
recovery coach or to facilitate a
support group so who better to connect
someone to HIV care than someone who’s
HIV positive and was once out of care
themselves who better to train someone
on the street to use narcan than someone
whose own life was once saved by narcan
who better to run support groups for
male sex workers and a hormone male sex
worker who got out of the life and
became an advocate we have a transgender
outreach project that we just started
last year and this project once again
has shown us that the power of people
seeing themselves reflected in the staff
cannot be understated for a client to
walk through the doors and to see a
trans woman of color or a gay man whose
public about his HIV status or a latina
survivor of sex trafficking and see
themselves it’s life-changing so the
question that I’ve often received for
the past dozen or so years is how did
you get involved in this work and the
implicit question is are you appear and
so people are so curious as to why
somebody who does not look like the
stereotype of a sex worker or a person
who’s experienced homelessness or HIV
would dedicate their professional career
and in some ways their life to this
population and so my story is that I was
working in pawtucket in the Barton
Street neighborhood on the border of
Pawtucket and Central Falls and the
neighborhood had identified prostitution
as an issue
they wanted to address and we perhaps
naively thought that we could make an
impact and so we started with a core
group of community partners and we hired
one part-time peer staff person we had
$15,000 budget that first year and so
little did we know that 12 years later
we would grow to an organization that is
10 staff people and 20 times the budget
so although I am NOT a peer I have a
role to play I’ve always believed in
justice for marginalized populations and
it’s been one of the driving forces in
my life since I was very small and I
think my parents for that guidance and
so I believe my role is to support and
guide the work of these incredible men
and women as they save lives and change
the world
so to all of you here who might say okay
how can I help
I’m not a peer how can I help a peer
organization I don’t I’m not in
substance abuse recovery how can I help
people who are in recovery I would say
three things first what is your
strengths what is your history and how
can you use that to help an organization
like ours or to help clients like ours
if you are an accountant you can use
your skills your counting skills and
save and volunteer in an organization
like ours and save us an enormous amount
of money money that we can invest back
in our clients if you are a young person
with a huge social media following you
can host a drive a fundraiser and
underwear drive a toilets use drive and
donate the proceeds to our clients if
you are a teacher like my mother and you
are you can help us with to provide
tutoring for low literacy clients which
my mother has done for the last two and
a half years so secondly I would say how
can I see others from a strengths-based
perspective so if I spent all day
lamenting the fact that my staff person
Sally does
not have computer skills I might miss
the fact that Sally is universally
beloved and knows everyone in Providence
so if I simply pair Sally up with a
young intern to capture our efforts on
the computer I have the best of both
worlds and likewise if I felt frustrated
with frequently absent bill who has a
lot of doctor’s appointments I might
miss the fact that bills doctor’s
appointments give him the day-to-day
perspective that we need and when
working with people with HIV and working
to implement change and advocacy for
people living with HIV so these are not
merely odd examples these are everyday
choices that we make when we work in
service of marginalized populations and
finally when asking why people do the
things they do why they make seemingly
unsafe and destructive choices we need
to ask ourselves need to look deeply at
issues systemic issues such as racism
and poverty and homophobia and ask
ourselves what can we do to remedy these
issues and not simply the issues that
can be fixed with a band-aid because
when we work together to remedy those
deeper issues we will create a better
future for peers clients you me everyone
so in the beginning I asked you to think
about where you were in 1998 so now it
is 2017 and I’m here on stage and you’re
here in the audience watching this talk
but I’m not here by myself I’m here as a
member of a team a group of people
incredible people doing incredible work
every single day and so I’d like to
bring them on stage with me and their
past and their hard work have led them
to this moment
receiving applause in front of a
thousand people
[Applause]
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