Aug. 31 is International Overdose Awareness Day and purple chairs are being placed around Nanaimo throughout the month sharing the stories of those who lost their lives to the overdose crisis.
To raise awareness and start conversations around the overdose crisis, the Nanaimo Community Action Team (CAT) is calling on community members to display purple chairs at the entrances of homes or stores with stories of people who have died from a drug overdose through their purple chair campaign.
This is leading up to CAT’s event on International Overdose Awareness Day where the organization is hoping to fill Diana Krall Plaza in downtown Nanaimo with 500 purple chairs representing the number of people in Nanaimo that have died since it was declared a state of emergency in 2016.
CHLY spoke with Beverley Planes, coordinator for Nanaimo CAT, about their campaign and the importance of bringing awareness to the toxic drug crisis and remembering the lives lost from it.
