Portland People's Outreach Project (PPOP) are a peer-run organization that provides a needle exchange and other harm-reduction services for Portland's houseless community. They are volunteers on the front lines of not just the struggle against our inequitable economic system, but also the COVID-19 pandemic. While the coronavirus itself may be an equal-opportunity threat, the negative social, economic, personal, and physical and mental health effects of the pandemic are not hitting everybody equally. KBOO's Sam Bouman spoke with two PPOP volunteers about what this means for the people they work with.
From their website:
"The Portland People’s Outreach Project, or PPOP, is an all-volunteer organization in Portland that provides clean syringes, Naloxone (Narcan), and other harm reduction supplies directly to users. Unlike many needle exchanges, PPOP is need-based, not 1-for-1, meaning our users do NOT have to dispose of dirty syringes in order to receive new ones. PPOP distributes supplies by means of a bicycle outreach on Friday evenings and at a fixed site in St. Johns on Saturday afternoon (see schedule for more details). PPOP is a project of the People's Harm Reduction Alliance, or PHRA."
- KBOO