Meeting with Sam Thiara

When planning to organize a big event, getting the right people to help and advise is paramount, but the problem is that too often people don’t know what they’re doing or lack experience. Fortunately, here at SFU, we have a great resource when it comes to organizing, planning, and managing great projects and this person is Sam Thiara. I guess most of you have at least heard of him, and if not then open your BBA student agenda and there are 2 glossy pages, Sam’s picture is on one of them. One of his official titles is called “Manager of Student Engagement and Recruitment” another is called “Student Affairs Officer”. But the thing is that Sam does everything and knows everyone and his job title will never clearly define everything he’s involved in and does in the business department. A short and incomplete list of what Sam manages would be: Competitions, Student Development, International Exchanges, Conferences, and he’s also involved with and advise business clubs and associations.

So as you probably understand, Sam is the person you want on board with your project, and it seemed natural for us to try to get Sam on board. It took many attempts to successfully have a meeting with him, but the wait was worth it. In what seems to be 5 minutes, but was probably more like 15 minutes, Sam has given us 2 contacts, advises on funding, given 2 website URLs which turned out to be great resources, he also gave his opinion and advised on how to maximize our chances of success and even offered more help!

So from here, we will try to get funding from at least 2 levels of government: municipal and provincial since they are the ones more closely affected by drug addiction in DTES and are therefore more likely to help us, and Sam has also contacts at these 2 levels.

Sam also advised that it would be lengthy and complicated to get a credit for the seminar, but it could be done with determination and good arguments. One good point he has brought is that the first event is all about numbers, how many people you can get, then those people will talk to other friends and the word will spread. So we might have to change our strategy a little in this regard.  Another idea was to have a panel discussion with a broad selection of experts: health care expert, DTES drug addict, government representant, someone close to the cause that think we’re not doing enough and maybe even someone from the 2010 committee.

One last thing that Sam talked about and that will get its own post is called Vancouver Agreement and involves the 3 levels of government in an attempt to to promote and support sustainable economic, social and community development. We’ll blog more about this initiative.

We invited Sam to come to our presentation on Monday, to be part of the booth and have a chance to network (because that is Sam’s strength). Of course someone like Sam is busy and he might not be able to attend because of prior engagements, but we keep our fingers crossed!

Progress to Innovation Cultivation

A collaborative reflection on our progress and barriers from Ben, Matt, Nelson and Sunny

In an effort to improve and educate peoples views on drug prevention, drug use and harm reduction, our group has come up with the idea to host an “open” forum with a panel of experts, each carrying a different view and experience in this field. The difference in this event we are organizing compared to similar events is that attendants will get to participate in discussions. Not only that, they will get to work with each other to generate a solution related to this topic at the event and receive feedback from our guests. On top of that, attendants will be put into contact with people required to get their ideas to become reality.

In focusing on the one of the main barriers, funding, we have noticed that a lot of businesses that are not normally involved with drugs are very hesitant to participate. Although businesses see this extra exposure as “free” advertising and improving public relations, they still want something back for it. For example, the bank that we have contacted have mentioned that they are willing to provide cheaper financing or free business accounts but as for actual financial assistance, we would need to provide them how they would benefit from this. Fortunately, this event is relatively low in cost and most of the costs involved can be covered by the ticket sales. However, any additional source of funding still helps and we are in the process of looking for alternate sources of funding.

A second barrier that our group is facing is the ability to make this a sustainable event. Our current idea is based on using a website for people that went to the event or anyone else interested in this topic to go and discuss their ideas and have annual events based on the “hot topics” in the website. However, this is based heavily on how successful the website is and more importantly how successful this event will be. As we plan mainly to educate and connect people, there is no quantitative measurement we can go by apart from the attendance count. We can only improve effectiveness once there is a way to measure the effectiveness of our open forum.

However, one aspect of this project that has suprised our group is the willingness of experts to assist and participate in an event like this. Our group member Ben, was very successful in bringing in people from all areas in this topic. The enthusiasm from these experts as well as their advice and guidance has certainly been a great help in being one step closer to our final goal.

Students for Change

The Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy (CSSDP) is a national youth and student network providing the necessary education and resources to empower chapters formed by youth and students to work on substance use issues facing their community. Chapters engage in activities such as peer and public education, drug policy reform and harm reduction projects. CSSDP specifically advocates for drug policies that are scientifically studied and proven effective in decreasing the negative impacts of drug use on individuals and communities.

SFU has their own chapter headed by Jeremy Janz, a current SFU student. We were informed of Jeremy’s role in CSSDP at SFU by Mark Haden from Vancouver Coastal Health, however, making contact with Jeremy has been difficult and is ongoing. They have also seen considerable success in generating interest in their cause among students using existing social networking platforms. What is most interesting and related to our goals is that CSSDP is completely operated by students for the purpose of combating the stigma associated with drug use and changing views of youth towards drugs to advocate for more effective drug policy.

In October 2009, the CSSDP will be holding their annual conference in Vancouver hosted specifically by the SFU and UBC chapters. Called Blueprints for Beyond Prohibition, this year’s conference will build on the 2008 conference examining 100 years of failure of prohibition and present, explore and debate existing alternatives to drug prohibition in Canada. It will bring together students, community members, drug users, politicians, law enforcement, researchers, clinicians and legal experts for an informed, collaborative and critical ‘visioning’ of regulated systems for currently-illegal substances. As this is very similar to what we are hoping to do, it would be beneficial for us to get in contact with CSSDP about a possible collaboration. 

We are hoping to use our event to generate interest in the social issue of addiction among SFU/UBC Business students in particular to drive participation in the CSSDP’s event. By seeding interest in drug policy alternatives at our event, we can direct participants toward furthering their policy ideas and putting their ideas on business’ contribution to solving social issues by being apart of Blueprints for Beyond Prohibition. Through their involvement, the CSSDP can garner membership from our participant base and encourage participation in their event.

This is mutually beneficial for both our event and the exposure and direct membership and participation for the CSSDP. We are also evaluating the possibility of awarding the top teams from our event paid enrollment in the October event hosted by the CSSDP, as decided by our panel of speakers. This would provide an incentive for participants in our business event to take their envisions for policy alternatives to a much larger and broader audience.

Using FaceBook for Discussion

Our professor, Graham Dover,  had emailed us a link about for a Facebook group. It was created by the BC Medical Association to create conversations about drug addiction -  using Facebook as a platform for discussion. The main question is: “Is Addiction A Disease or Human Failure?”  Browsing through the numerous posts, it seems that the general consensus is that addiction is a disease. However, posters differ on how they define “disease”.

Using social networking websites are a great place to generate  awareness on an issue. We will post information about our event on Facebook, as well as the ideas that will be generated. Just like the group created by BCMA, we will allow users to create posts and stimulate discussion.

If you are interested in joining this Facebook dialogue on addiction, please click on this link. The greater the discussion, the greater understanding we have of how various people view addiction. With that said, to change people’s mentality, we have to know where they are coming from.