INPUD wants you to celebrate with your community on 1 November.
This year, we have 35 grants of US$300 each to get you going. The grants are open to drug user-led networks, organisations & collectives. You just need to tell us your creative ideas for celebrating our rights, choice, and dignity within your local community.
Submit your proposal by completing the application form: https://forms.gle/aCWVrzhW9wattT2q8
Deadline to submit your small grant proposal is Friday, 4 October 2024.
You will be directly informed and contacted if your proposal has been accepted. However, even if you have not been selected, we encourage you to still participate and engage in International Drug Users Day 2024.
Read our #IDUD24 blog post by clicking here.
Eligibility and Criteria
To apply for the small grant for International Drug Users Day 2024:
- Agree to share images, videos etc for posting INPUD social media and submit receipts adding to the grant total.
- You are a drug-user led network, organisation or collective group led by people who use drugs in any part of the world. You don’t need to be formally registered or funded. Applications from networks led by women and young people who use drugs are strongly encouraged;
- At least one person from your group should be a member of either the INPUD or International Women who Use Drugs (INWUD) e-list;
- Complete the application form: https://forms.gle/aCWVrzhW9wattT2q8;
- Agree to conduct the proposed activity(ies) on 1 November 2024;
- Promote the activity(ies) during on IDUD through social media and other online platforms, including through INPUD’s social media;
- Agree to share images, videos etc for posting INPUD social media and submit receipts adding to the grant total.
Some ideas of what to do to get people involved in celebrating IDUD24
Below are some ideas to get you thinking or to give you a starting point for consulting with your community. You can choose to do any of these whether or not you apply for a grant. You can even combine a couple. Or you can come up with something else that feels more appropriate for your community.
If you would like more details and ideas on how to make any of these events a sure success, ask us for an info sheet. We’ve got a lot of ideas to get people involved, how to incorporate the theme, how to attract partners and so on.
We suggest you put everything on social media, using #IDUD24 and tagging INPUD. Have prizes if you can – make up certificates if you’re low on cash. And remember to consider children in your planning – I’m sure parents in your community would love to tell you what they need.
- Get your community members to sticker the world – poles, footpaths, bags, buildings – with a variety of cool images & mottos in different languages that will sit on our website for you to download and print.
- You can also use our images to make t-shirts, posters or badges for people to wear on 1 November, and/or use them in your social media and on your website.
- Organise a “pop up” art show of works by artists who use drugs – trained or amateur – in an office or gallery – or maybe consider a mapped walking tour in shop display windows! Theme it to drug issues or portraits, or a certain size or media, or let the artist decide. Get it on social media.
- Eating together always works – try a barbecue? pizzas? sandwiches? Or just a massive cake? Or perhaps vouchers from a local shop? Whatever you do, remember food safety!
- Organise a day of hobby, health & harm reduction classes & sessions, lining up volunteer teachers or organisers. You can go for different levels of ability – a beginner class in origami folding or stretching; an intermediate class in cooking or upcycling clothes or lamps; or an advanced music jamming session or life drawing class.
- Hold a trivia quiz – try relevant topics like chemistry, famous users, drug myths, harm reduction. Book people by groups or match them up on the day.
- Schedule a topic-based webinar on a topic that means something to users in your local area – perhaps use the IDUD theme. Why not include a guest from another region – INPUD can help you sort that. INPUD staff are also available to participate by Zoom.
- Have a debate (or mock debate) on a topic important to the community. Involve partners if relevant. Make it live or online or both. You can get a winner voted on by the audience.
- Have a live music event featuring musos / bands / acts put together for the occasion, from among your community who love to perform. Go for a theme or let them choose their material.
- Host a storytelling webinar, with users sharing experiences. Like a webinar with an emphasis on personal tales, Theme it – My passion (I’m not just a drug user); Living to tell the tale after overdose; I’m never going back to jail – or mix it up.
- Have a talent show – “Users got talent” – anything from comedy to magic to dancing to singing to skits to animal acts! You can hold auditions for a final 10 or pick them cold and be surprised!
- Feature people who use drugs and their pets! A great stigma bust – we show our pets love, responsibility and an even temper – things the general community don’t think we possess. Celebrate with pets at work in health settings; a parade with prizes for things like lookalikes and best tip to keep pets safe around drugs; a Q&A forum with a vet, trainer & groomer.
- Hold a flash mob in a shopping centre, Parliament House, health service. Sing a song about drugs, choice, resilience – try Aretha’s Respect!; dance; act out a scene from a movie; recite a poem; have IDUD signs; make IDUD t-shirts to wear or wear 1 colour. Just make it cool to look at and film it.
- Have a karaoke party. You can go for themed songs – drugs, love, songs playing when they first used; or just make it a no-theme fun time.
- Ask for cool donated stuff then give it away. Ask everyone you know and then get them to do the same! It doesn’t have to be expensive or store bought. A bunch of flowers or box of veges from Auntie’s garden; earrings from a hobby jeweller; a free coffee from a local cafe; haircuts; meals; cakes; guitar lessons.
- Get a DJ, have a dance. Having it in the day by booking a regular night club can work well or try a church hall – think school discos!
- Have a social media video event – Ask people to make 90 sec videos. Can be a 1 shot vid taped on a phone. They could tell a quick story, give a harm reduction tip, sing, say a poem, act a script or make a stop motion like “Steve the Syringe goes to jail.”
- Host a games & cards night – or even bingo! You can set up tables of 4 or 6 and borrow games from the community.
- Organise a media event with partners & funders. Write an IDUD media release & get partners to do the same. Or hold a media conference with a panel of people including community members. Talk about drug user pride; stigma and discrimination; the IDUD theme; or call for an important service needed in the community.
- Have an outing somewhere in nature like a local beach, nature park, mountain reserve, river bank, dam, beautiful botanical gardens. Organise a bus or cars, take food, drinks, cushions & games and hang out together somewhere nice.
- Organise a game of something with a ball or frisbee in a park. Pétanque; soccer; softball. So good for mental health to get out in the sun. Perhaps combine with a barbeque.
- Put together a “zine” – with stories, poems, drawings from community members and add in some harm reduction tips.. Don’t get too ambitious – go for 16 or 20 pages & think about photocopying & stapling in-house. A theme like the IDUD theme keeps things focused.
- Circulate a petition to later present to Parliament or a local council or even a hospital CEO or Board President. This is useful if there is a service needed locally or to ask for general local funding or to ask for heath staff to have stigma & discrimination training or to make changes to a service.
- Hold first aid training for the community. Include overdose training for various drugs, how to avoid & treat abscesses, as well as skills relevant for the local area. Snake bite common? Blue bottles in the water? How to comfort sick kids? Try & use trainers that can give a useful certificate.
- Release something, announce something, launch something. Basically if you’re working on anything at the moment, hold off it until 1 November to announce it! Or come up with something new like starting a volunteer program with people who use drugs, or a needle pick up service in the local area.
- Hold an afternoon of discussions to talk about things important to your local community – think tables of small groups, with topics on stapled bits of paper selected from a bowl at random. Finish with short presentations by each table.
Stickers
Click here to access a google drive folder where you can download all of the stickers for #IDUD24.
