Project Weber/RENEW is a merged community organization committed to helping with harm reduction, overdose, and recovery in both men, women, and the transgender community in the Downtown Providence area, as well as Pawtucket.
What first started in 2006 as just a drop-in center for male sex workers, called Project Weber, has now emerged into a multipurpose organization committed to helping people who are struggling with addiction.
One of the main focuses of the Kennedy Plaza Project is overdose prevention. To keep people as safe as possible, they are actively working with EMT’s in the area. They are also working with local businesses and training them on administering Narcan.
Narcan is an emergency treatment for an opioid overdose and helps to reverse the overdose effects. Making sure people in the area know how to use it is essential to helping save lives in the downtown area.
The Kennedy Plaza Project is one location for Project Weber/RENEW. People who are in need of their services can go to receive them to ensure that they are as safe as possible. Some of the services provide include:
- Basic needs – food, water, clothing
- Harm reduction- clean needles, Narcan, condoms, fentanyl test strips, and needle exchange
- The entire company offers this, not just Kennedy Plaza, as this is a primary focus of what they are doing to keep people safe
- Case management and peer support
One of the benefits of case management and peer support is that many of the mentors have experience with the same issues and experience with the path to recovery.
Project Weber/RENEW also offers referrals to sober living, detox, and better living.
PWR’s Kennedy Plaza Project Coordinator, Haley Carbonneau, reaches out to other agencies to partner with and provide service to clients that they cannot provide. For example, one of the projects is the daily needle cleanup around the Downtown Providence area with the downtown safety team. Getting dirty needles off the streets is a great start to ensuring a safer environment for everyone.
In Kennedy Plaza, there are also studies setup up that qualified applicants can participate in including the Matpharm Study put on by Rhode Island Hospital and is focused on Buprenorphine Treatment. Brown University is also doing a RAPIDS study which is focused on protecting users from overdoses. And Project TOARS is a study that is focused on people who have experienced a traumatic event or have used heroin or prescription pain pills in the past 30 days.
You can follow Project Weber/RENEW on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram here:
https://www.facebook.com/weberrenew/
https://twitter.com/WeberRenew
https://www.instagram.com/weberrenew/
Visit their website to see how you can get involved and learn more about them and what they do: