We were lucky to catch up with Shannon Ashe recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Shannon, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

Starting The Everywhere Project together with my best friend has definitely been the biggest risk and adventure of my life. In December of 2020, the United States was experiencing the highest rates of fatal overdose ever. I had lost my brother in law just a few months before and felt like there had to be something I could do to try and prevent more lives from being lost. This led to me wandering the subway tunnels of Center City Philadelphia armed with narcan and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I ran into someone doing the same thing, she had blonde hair and was taller than me but around my age and also by herself. She had clearly been doing this awhile and was more prepared than me, especially considering I had just ran out of narcan and sandwiches. “Come with me”, she said and together, we spent the next three hours providing harm reduction support to dozens of individuals residing in the subways. Once we had ran out of supplies, she finally told me her name. We quickly became friends and teamed up with someone else that helped us to start doing late night outreaches regularly on Saturdays. People began to ask about how they could help, turns out people don’t really feel comfortable just giving money to some people in the same way they would be willing to give to a nonprofit organization. But, I had NO idea how to start or run a business, I am a social worker. I didn’t know how to do taxes or manage a budget, I didn’t really know a bylaw was or how to write them. I was consumed by doubt. I knew I could do outreach and that together, my co-founder and I were building amazing relationships with community members but what did it mean to start a business? I turned to my husband, who graciously agreed to act as our accountant if we were to move forward with this, I sought consultation from people online that had experience doing this and was shocked to have a consultant offer us services for free. The more people that learned about our idea, the more support we received, The passion my co-founder and I have for helping people combined with the reactions of others as they learned about what we were doing and what we wanted to achieve gave us the motivation to move forward with starting The Everywhere Project, which was officially born in March of 2021, just 4 months after that December day in the subway tunnels.

In the two and a half years since, we have grown more than we could have imagined. We serve 600-1,000 individuals each week and provide consistent access to nutritious food, weather appropriate clothing, overdose reversal training, access to social services, naloxone, hygiene items and access to safer use supplies for a variety of substances. We are coming up on two consecutive years of our Wednesday night outreach, which served about 30 people at the beginning and averages about 250 now. We also provide access to harm reduction supplies and education at community events and parties around the city because people deserve access to harm reduction everywhere, not just in the cliche areas people identify as being high substance use areas.

We have achieved all of this without any official funding, so we are constantly at risk of being unable to sustain what we are doing. Which is stressful and hard, especially because we know how many people depend on us for food and other basic needs. That being said, this is a risk we take on willingly and the payoff has been greater than we could have fathomed.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I entered the field of substance use at 23 years old. Not long out of college, I was hired as a substance use therapist in women and children’s program. This was not my plan, dealing with my parents’ substance use difficulties throughout my entire life had made me bitter and I had no desire to work in substance use. But, I needed a job and they were hiring, This turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made. Just a few months into my new job, clients began to tell me that I was different from any other counselors they had before, One woman in particular told me she had been to 14 different rehabs and had never had someone help her like I had. Their feedback led to my commitment to substance use treatment. After five years working inpatient treatment, I started to feel hopeless. I had more clients that died of overdoses after completing treatment than those that were successful in their recovery. I stopped feeling that what I was doing was helping and started to feel like part of the problem. This led to some personal reflection on the abstinence only model and the way I had been proliferating this as the only way to overcome a substance use disorder. I realized that I did not genuinely believe this. Shouldn’t my clients be the ones setting goals for themselves and not me imposing what I think? I myself, was not sober, so why was I mandating this of others? Did I really believe that if someone started smoking weed or had a beer at a party, that they would sooner or late end up back on opiates? I began to accept that the abstinence only model was not the solution I had been led to believe it was and started to look for alternative ways of supporting people. Ways that emphasized autonomy and respect, that did not further stigmatize an already traumatized population. What I found was the concept of harm reduction.

I applied for an internship at my city’s sole syringe exchange program. Before I had the chance to begin, I lost my brother in law to an overdose in May of 2020. After watching him fight this for nearly 10 years, his death just further reinforced the need for accessible harm reduction services. At my internship, I had opportunities to learn about safer substance use approaches and ways to prevent overdoses. I had access to naloxone which I started distributing in my free time, along with any food donations I could get together.

Over the past three years and with A LOT of help, I feel we have succeeded in creating a harm reduction based program that provides respectful support to vulnerable community members. I think what I am most proud of is the community that we have created. So many of our volunteers are currently or previously unhoused and their desire to be involved in what we do is truly the best feedback I can ask for. What I want people to know is that people who use drugs are people, too, and The Everywhere Project will continue to work tirelessly to fight against the stigma of substance use and provide support and love to those that need it the most.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your firm or practice?

I have always loved tie dye and when I received a vinyl cutter as a gift, I made myself a harm reduction themed sweatshirt that said, “Narcan Saves Lives”. This just so happened to coincide with when I started outreach and people quickly began asking me to make shirts for them. So when we decided to establish The Everywhere Project, I bought A LOT of tee shirts and began dying and printing them at home. This was no small feat and many nights, I was awake until after midnight trying to finish orders,. Within a couple of months, we raised $3,000 which covered the fees for creating a non profit organization and allowed us to start buying some necessary supplies like plastic bags. While this is much less capital than most companies require, we were able to do this without any outside investments which allowed us to maintain full autonomy over the organization.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

In only two and a half years, The Everywhere Project has been incredibly successful in providing street level outreach as well as producing substance use related educational materials that are now being used across the United States as well as in Europe and Australia.

I believe that consistency, validity of our materials, and reliability of our services have been paramount in developing our reputation. In terms of our street level outreach, we never miss a Wednesday or Saturday and volunteers and participants both know they can count on us twice a week. Additionally, as both co-founders hold master’s degrees in their fields, all of our educational materials are heavily researched from evidence based materials and are factual and reliable which has set us apart not only as an outreach organization but an educational one as well.

Finally, we are a very “friendly” organization and prioritize both our participants and volunteers knowing they are always welcome to join us at outreach and we welcome anyone that is interested to get more involved.

Contact Info:

• Website: Everywhereproject.org
• Instagram: instagram.com/the_everywhere_projectfac
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheEverywhereProject