February 2025
This Guide has been written to provide drug user-led networks with invaluable advice for building the sorts of partnerships that will advance our movement and make us stronger. It draws from the experience of our regional networks for making an effective audit of partnerships we have already forged and assessing new partnerships as they develop.
As other key populations have found, not only do partnerships bring in necessary funding, they can be wonderful collaborations that move our goals forward, where power is shared with us and we are introduced into a variety of relevant forums and projects. However these kinds of connections are not guaranteed.
Given our experiences of powerlessness and lack of agency as individuals who use drugs, it is entirely consistent that when we organise, we also continue to experience stigma and discrimination on a collective level.
Whose interests do our partnerships really serve? Are they genuinely about advancing the health, rights and dignity of people who use drugs, or are they tokenistic, or even parasitic? And how do we tell? Read on…
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