COPOLAD III has worked with Latin American and Caribbean countries on a territorial approach to drug-related vulnerabilities using the ECO2 Community Treatment methodology, with the main aim of contributing to the improvement of policies capable of reaching highly vulnerable populations characterized by limited or no access to state care services. The main strategy is an integrated approach that considers dimensions such as occupation and work, housing, basic assistance, education, rehabilitation and harm reduction, and culture and leisure.
Territorialization is affirmed as a central strategy for building inclusive policies adapted to communities, by articulating formal and informal actors and bringing public policies closer to the territory.
Within this framework, over the last two years, countries have developed territorialization modalities that show different ways of adapting each approach to the particularities of national and community contexts.
Among the main results are:
a) The construction of a proposal for low-threshold mechanisms capable of offering accessible care adapted to the conditions of communities;
b) The design of an intervention model in highly vulnerable contexts, aimed at responding to the specific needs of groups that have not been served until now;
c) The development of harm reduction and risk management strategies, with an emphasis on populations exposed to greater social exclusion;
d) The management of resources necessary for implementation, piloting, and eventual expansion and replicability of the offer;
e) The incorporation of the experience and knowledge of community leaders as a key input for the development of contextualized proposals with the potential for expansion to different contexts.
This process also benefited from the specialized assistance of RAISSS and local technical advice, both of which accompanied the countries throughout the entire process.
COPOLAD contributes to this process because it recognizes the importance of addressing the local level, because it recognizes the value of the community in addressing consumption at this level, and because strengthening the coordination between the different levels and actors involved is essential to achieving results.
Territorialization guides
