Please consider a donation to The Grand Rapids Red Project this holiday season that will advance our work around addressing structural barriers to people protecting their health and its racialized impact on our community.
A gift of $250 will support our HIV Care program in providing HIV medical case management services to 1 person living with HIV for 3 months. HIV does not affect all communities equally; community viral load plays a huge role in how and when individuals may come in contact with the virus. As a result, nationwide, Black men who have sex with men have a 1 in 2 lifetime chance of contracting HIV, whereas White men who have sex with men have a 1 in 15 chance. Here in Kent County, Black women are 26 times more likely to be living with HIV than their White counterparts, based on race alone and no other factors.
A gift of $500 will support the provision of 10 naloxone rescue kits within the community. Nationally, over 1,000,000 people have died of preventable substance-related overdoses since Red Project was founded. How is this the case when we have this medication that can save almost every one of these lives? Criminalization plays a heavy role, and here in Kent County the rate of overdose death in Black communities is 3 times higher than in White communities.
A gift of $1,000 will support the provision of safer use supplies to 10 participants of our Clean Works program for a year. While people from all communities use drugs, the Clean Works program recognizes that substance use may look slightly different in different communities, and that the realities of race, class, gender, etc. can affect both people's susceptibility towards, and capacity for dealing with, substance-related harm. As a result, we have expanded our service offerings to include safer smoking and snorting supplies, drug-checking services, and information on pressed pills.
As we move forward into 2025, we recognize that there will be change. Red Project is committed to providing our community with access to the knowledge, tools, information and support that they need to stay healthy. We have served some of the most vulnerable in our community for over 25 years. With your support, we will continue to do so.