Sarah Ziegenhorn (she/her)
Location: Iowa City, IA
Program and Role: Founder of Iowa Harm Reduction Coalition
What are you most grateful for?
I am most grateful for my community of Harm Reduction friends and family. I've had the good fortune to make so many strong relationships within this community as I've made my way through various roles in the field over the past decade. From developing friendships with fellow outreach volunteers at HIPS in Washington, DC to building sister-like relationships with other young women leading organizations in Red States, this community has supported me through periods of strength and growth, periods of transition, and during times that have been really, really painful. I feel very honored to work in a professional community among and with people who I also consider to be family - I don't know if everyone is as fortunate to get to work with people they love, day in and day out, year after year.
What is the most useful thing you carry?
Because of the nature of harm reduction work, we are often on-call 24/7. This has its upsides and downsides, but it is one of the consequences of working to build a network of care where our "traditional" public health, health care, and social service systems don't extend (and then waiting for those systems to catch up and bring the funding with them). Many people see their cell phone as a curse - a distraction, a time waste, a machine that distorts time and attention and ruins the mind. For me, my cell phone represents dozens of ways that someone can contact me for support or services. It's extremely useful to have a device in your hand that allows you to meet people through whatever form of communication they can find access to, be it voice call, text, facebook messenger, encrypted messaging, email, etc. The Iowa Harm Reduction Coalition's voice and text message hotline (as well as our social media accounts) routes to my cell phone, so carrying this thing with me everywhere I go is often times the first and best way that I make contact with members of our community who are looking for harm reduction services and support. It also means that I can typically work from anywhere - there are some days when I may accompany a client to an hours-long visit at the emergency department, drive a mass delivery of naloxone half-way across our state, or sit in a series of committee meetings. Where ever I am, I often need to be multiple other places at the same time, like with another client or at another meeting. My phone allows me to be multiple places at once.
