Sunny Chan

Being raised in Richmond all my life, I was only aware of the extensive drug issues with have through the media. Due to that influence, I’ve always thought like the general public and believed that it was a waste of public funds to try and “rescue” or “clean up” the streets. After being enrolled at the Social Innovation class SFU and having heard from guest speakers that actually had the opportunity to deal with these people, I began to realize that there is actually hope in the helping the drug addicts. Much like myself, I think that the general public will be less resistance to the idea of helping with the DTES if their were more educated about the issue and just blurred by the media as I once was.

What I’ve learned

Over the past 13 weeks, I have been exposed to lots of social problems surrounding me that I’ve heard lots about, but never have really given it a second thought. During the progress of this course, I was given the opportunity to learn about how a student like myself who have very limited resources can make a difference. After starting to work with my team members on tackling the addiction problems that is so vibrant in Vancouver, I learned that the most important thing in making change is education. Education is a powerful tool, as it helps to reflect on the reality and reduce some stigmatization that people have regarding addicts. Even though our event focuses on tackling the addiction problem, an open forum that gets bright minds together can be used to tackle other social problems like poverty and global warming.

As part of education, I learned that we have to be focused on a specific topic within a problem. It is impossible to simply have a plan to change the world. In order to see success, we need to focus on specific problems. For example, our event focuses on edcuating people about alternatives to prohibition. The addicts that fills the street of Vancouver were once regular citizens much like us, however, one bad decision brought them to where they are today. It is sad that the intense stigmatization has created a barrier for these addicts to seek the help they need to be treated and rehabilitated back into the public. In hopes of enlightening people with facts about these troubled addicts, we also hope that by creating more exposure to alternatives, it will cause enough noise to have people thinking about more feasible alternatives.

Unfortunately, as the stigmatization still exists, it is extremely hard to recieve funding for anything that is drug related. This barrier for us has also taught me to budget events properly and where to go for sponsors. Keeping an open mind that I will be rejected a lot, I learned that it is important to be persistant and have to believe in the event I am trying to get funding for inorder to “sell” it to sponsors. Lastly, regardless of what the social problem is, the solution has to be self sustaining, meaning it can’t solely depend on one major sponsor. Ideally, the solution should be able to generate some sort of revenue to fund itself eventually.