This bus ad will be in Kelowna for the next eight weeks.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/MOMS STOP THE HARM
October 16, 2019 - 8:00 AM
Helen Jennens has been working to raise awareness about the opioid crisis for years.
Sharing the tragic story of how her two sons died from overdoses, she’s continually confronted her own loss to help others veer from the path she treads.
Alongside others at Moms Stop the Harm, a network of Canadian families whose loved ones died from drug related harms, she’s working toward the decriminalization of illicit substances and better treatment of those who use.
Now they have another tool in their arsenal and it will be rolling into a bus stop near you.
B.C. Transit will be running an ad on 10 city buses for a minimum of eight weeks.
Moms Stop the Harm covered the cost of the ad and the rest was sponsored.
“These buses will be seen thousands of times by thousands of people over the next eight weeks,” Jennens said in a Facebook post. “It is somewhat shocking for us as we see the bus a multitude of times during our daily outings in Kelowna, but every time we see it we are reminded of our depth of love and commitment to Moms Stop the Harm and the work we do.”
The bus ad has the words “end overdose” on it and it also has a photo taken late this summer that gained widespread approval.
“I have always been so impacted by the photos around Remembrance Day,” Jennens wrote on Facebook. “To see those crosses representing all those lost in war was so powerful to me, the sheer numbers they portrayed was mind blowing.
Crosses are not necessarily religious symbols in my mind, but we certainly understand their meaning. ‘Somebody’s someone had died’ and we pay them respect with the cross.”
Nicole Richard, a local photographer with Wax Pencil Imagery took the photo on Knox Mountain on a late day in August and there are aims to make it spread beyond buses. Presently we are working on gathering the funds to have this image on a digital billboard onHighway 97.
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News from © iNFOnews, 2019