Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Marc Burrows. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Marc, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.

Before I founded my program, I knew what I wanted to achieve. My goal was simply to improve the wellbeing of people who use drugs through compassionate healthcare and through a model that was not taking place in my community. I set out on this journey to understand the landscape of services in South Carolina for people who use drugs. I spent about a years time talking to anyone who would listen. This included state agencies, non profit organizations, businesses, and churches. One day, I had a meeting with a state politician and I thought I had hit the jackpot. I thought this guy was the answer to all my problems but I ended up walking away from that meeting with nothing gained other than a nice conversation. It was at that point that I realized if you want to do something, you just have to do it yourself. No one else was going to solve this problem for me. This was my jumping off point. I acquired the supplies I needed for my service and started doing outreach in my community. Word of mouth spread and business took off. Although this was effective at getting my service out there, I would recommend some changes for others looking to start their own business. I now realize how important it is to set up the back end of a business before getting started with the implementation of the service. Creating a board, policies and procedures, and all the HR paperwork first, will help the sustainability of a business in the long run.

Marc, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a person with lived experience of substance use and all of the consequences that come from it. My personal experiences and struggles are what led me to open my own practice due to seeing a need for this specific approach called “Harm Reduction”. Harm Reduction supports the rights of people who use drugs and strives to reduce harms by keeping people safe. We use other forms of harm reduction in every day life like seatbelts, lifejackets, designated drivers, and condoms for safe sex. For drug users, this includes sterile syringes and other items used in the injection process, and naloxone for overdose prevention. These items are the focus of the service, however, many other benefits happen to improve the lives of the people we serve. What makes my program special is that it was the first Harm Reduction program in the state of South Carolina. Many people believed that it was impossible to do in South Carolina either because of laws or funding. Also, it can be hard for people to think out of the box, where it is easy for us to think things have to be the way they are for no reason other than things being that way. I guess this is the definition of innovation. The solution always seemed obvious to me but doing that day to day in a field where it is seen as foreign can be tiring. When you bring any sort of innovation into a field, you’re made to feel like a black sheep.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

Networking and partnerships have been the most helpful in succeeding in my field. In the non-profit world, I have realized that you are nothing without your community, and if we are truly trying to be effective in our mission, we must lean on the strengths of other organizations while offering our assets to them. We are only as strong as the community around us. A community based organization is just that. It is made up of and serving the community, and therefore, networking with the community is vital to carrying out the work.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy for us to grow our clientele, or expand our reach has been to offer quality work. In my experience, if you provide a good service, word will spread and clients will come. We don’t engage in any advertising in the traditional sense, however, we make sure to have somewhat of an internet presence. The other thing that has been helpful in growing is being in our community. Educating the general public and advocating for what we do has allowed us to expand our reach. Harm Reduction in South Carolina is relatively new, which required us to spread awareness for our service and our approach.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.challengesinc.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/challenges_inc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChallengesIncorporated
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/challenges-incharmreduction/?viewAsMember=true