Sarah is a Co-Director at the Yuba Harm Reduction Collective, a rural worker led needle exchange. She is an organizer for the Sex Workers Outreach Project in Sacramento, and has done work for Smoke Works and Youth RISE. She is a 2024 recipient of the Jude Byrne Award.

Faced with responding to constant crises with low wages, many harm reduction workers are forced to leave the field. I was one of them. After five years of doing underpaid harm reduction outreach in encampments and losing people at work and in my own life, the level of grief and trauma became too much. I had to step away. When I returned to the work as a Co-Director for the Yuba Harm Reduction Collective, my coworkers and I were committed to prioritizing worker wellness and retention through enacting real structural change in the organization.

To support wellness beyond lip service, Yuba Harm Reduction Collective implemented policies such as a four day work week, unlimited paid time off, paid commute, wellness stipends, living wages, equal pay, conflict resolution training, intentional spaces for joy, and a horizontal structure with fist-to-five decision making. We started paying volunteers so that participants who weren't ready for full-time employment could be meaningfully involved in all levels of our work.

This presentation will cover lessons learned and implementation advice for other organizations struggling with grief, burnout, and retention. Yuba Harm Reduction Collective regularly meets with a network of other worker-led organizations to share strategies, and we have learned so much about how to resolve and work through conflict, support people through grief, and create cultures of care in our work.

The harm reduction community often speaks of hiring people who use drugs, but it is irresponsible to hire marginalized people for traumatic jobs without caring for their wellbeing. The harm reduction movement should no longer accept underpaying staff and leaving them to handle the impacts of trauma alone. This presentation will support organizations who want to implement changes, and support workers in advocating for those changes in their organizations.