NEWSLETTER - Canadian Harm Reduction Network

Copies of the THRTF Manual for Peer Workers and Agencies are available;there is no charge for this resource. Please contact us if you’d like to receivea copy.‘Humanities 101’How Plato is bringing a passion for learning to Vancouver’s less fortunate~Margo Pfeiff in Reader’s Digest, 8/03In the summer of 1999, Andrew Sharpe didn’t know where his next meal was coming from. The43 year old Quebec native was living on welfare in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside…. Sharpestruggled to survive on $500 a month…[and to] cope with his substance abuse. Then hespotted a poster on a telephone pole. “Free University,” it promised. He signed upimmediately.By early September Sharpe was riding a bus across town to Point Grey, one of Canada’swealthiest suburbs, to attend a unique program at the University of British Columbia. He wasamong 25 adults aged 20 to 62 with widely varied backgrounds – single mothers, AIDSsufferers, new immigrants, ex-convicts, drug addicts, homeless people and others…. What theyshared was an income below the poverty line, the ability to read a newspaper and a passionfor learning – the only prerequisites for an eight-month course called Humanities 101…. Theywere taught first year level philosophy, literature, architecture, economics and poetry byestablished professors and instructors who volunteered their time.The course stoked Sharpe’s thirst for learning. He devoured assignments, prowled thecomputer lab and university library stacks. As his confidence grew, Sharpe began to regain afoothold on his life. He started a running club in the Downtown Eastside and pressedHumanities 101 administrators to help him enter UBC as a regular student.Three years later, in November 2002, a fit-looking 46 year old Andrew Sharpe sips coffee inthe Downtown Eastside’s popular Radio Station Café where he is now manager. He hascompleted his second year of an arts degree. “Humanities 101 opened up a world ofpossibility…” he says.Sharpe is one of some 100 people who have graduated from Humanities 101 since it began inthe fall of 1998. Three alumni now attend UBC, and many more are enrolled in communityand technical colleges. Others have become self-employed or taken up volunteerism,community activism…. Almost all have felt their lives profoundly affected.“We’re not trying to make people employable or get them offdrugs,” says former Humanities 101 Director, Dr. Clint Burnham….“We’re trying to re-awaken their desire for knowledge. Our successis in helping people get a grip on their lives in small ways….”Humanities for the poor was the brainchild of U.S. author Earl Shorris, who had the idea ofteaching Socrates and Shakespeare to the underprivileged in 1995 while researching a book onpoverty. “The poor in America have been cheated,” Shorris maintained. “They get job skills –that’s all”…. The outcome shocked everyone, Shorris most of all. Students not only gained selfconfidenceand motivation but also began to resolve conflicts through reflection andnegotiation rather than reaction. Many went on to seek higher education….Variations on this course are now conducted in 37 cities across the United States, Mexico andAustralia. In Canada there is just one: Vancouver’s Humanities 101.…In the Humanities 101 classroom, students are treated like ordinary undergraduates, but…thatis something special. “When you are poor, you are spiritually and emotionally abused… InHumanities 101 there is respect; they listen to what you have to say. They don’t talk down toToronto Harm Reduction Task Forcewww.torontoharmreduction.org