NORTHAMPTON — August is Overdose Awareness Month and Hampshire HOPE is inviting the community to help “Light Northampton Purple” in honor of International Overdose Awareness Day.
The Department of Health and Human Services Prevention program Hampshire HOPE is recognizing International Overdose Awareness Day by inviting the community to join in on the visible tribute to the lives lost to overdose while calling to action around the ongoing opioid crisis.
These efforts will culminate with the city’s annual International Overdose Awareness Day Vigil on Wednesday, Aug. 28 at 6 p.m., at Forbes Library.
“Our big culminating event is at the end of the month with the vigil,” said Hampshire HOPE Coordinator Lauren Kelly. “What really came from some of these planning meetings with vigil organizers was thinking about ways to engage the wider community in the month leading up to the vigil.”
Several businesses will be lighting up their entire outdoor facades during the month as a show of support. Notably, Thornes Marketplace and Tellus & the Satellite Bar plan to keep their facades illuminated purple every night in August.
“The impact of substance misuse affects so many of us. Thornes is honored to be able to help bring awareness to this public health crisis and commemorate those we have lost,” said Thornes Marketing Director Jody Doele.
Additional current participating businesses in lighting Northampton purple include A Positive Place, Clinic Alternative Medicines, Hot Head Burritos, Bang Bang Body Arts, Greenfield Cooperative Bank, The Coffee Chat, Academy of Music, the Division of Community Care, Linda Manor Extended Care, Cooley Dickison OBGYN and Midwifery, Ella Alk Inuk LLC, Northampton Public Health Nurses and Herrell’s Ice Cream.
Residents, community members and local businesses are encouraged to join the effort by displaying purple lights in their windows as a show of solidarity, awareness and remembrance. To learn more or get involved, contact hampshirehope@northamptonma.gov.
“The idea behind the purple light campaign really came out of process for planning and thinking of how we can have local businesses be a part of this process,” Kelly shared. “How can we reach more individual community members to really think about our collective responsibility in this work and create a visual demonstration of our shared support of this work, but also in remembrance of those we lost, and also helping to really amplify and raise awareness about the ongoing work that’s needed around the opioid crisis.”
The month of awareness culminates with International Overdose Awareness Day on Aug. 31, but in Northampton, the month-long display will culminate with its vigil on Wednesday, Aug. 28 at 6 p.m., at Forbes Library.
For more information on the vigil, visit the event Facebook page at bit.ly/NorthamptonVigil.
“I’m so proud of the work Hampshire HOPE and our Department of Health and Human Services are doing to bring this crisis into the light,” said Northampton Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra. “The purple lights across our city shine as a symbol of compassion, remembrance and our community’s resolve to reduce stigma and address the opioid crisis together.”
The initiative has become a powerful reminder of the community’s shared commitment to reducing stigma, honoring the memory of those lost, preventing overdose and supporting recovery.
“Only having been in this role for a little over six months, my perspective in that time and having been on the community member side prior to that, I think there’s been a lot of community support and city support for the work we’re doing. So, it’s been really great to see local businesses also come into the fold,” said Kelly. “I think when thinking of Hampshire HOPE being a multi-sector coalition, we’ve had local municipalities and community organizations we’ve worked with, so now to find ways to work with local businesses has been a really positive opportunity.”
Sponsors of the annual vigil for International Overdose Awareness Day include Tapestry, Forbes Library, UMass Recovery, Northampton Recovery Center, the city of Northampton, the Department of Health and Human Services, Learn to Cope, DART and Hampshire HOPE.
While Hampshire HOPE is based out of Northampton’s Department of Health and Human Services, they are also assisting other county communities in their efforts to host their own overdose awareness day vigils. On Monday, Aug. 25, Easthampton will host its vigil at 6 p.m. at Millside Park.
Two more vigils will be hosted on Tuesday, Aug. 26, as the Central Western MA Veterans Affairs will host theirs at 11 a.m. at the Pavillion located at 421 N. Main St. in Leeds, and South Hadley will host its vigil that evening starting at 5:30 p.m. at Beachgrounds Park.
Belchertown will host its vigil on the Belchertown Town Common on Aug. 28 at 6 p.m. The final vigil Hampshire HOPE is currently assisting with comes on Friday Aug. 29 in Ware at 6:30 p.m., at Veterans’ Park.
“Hampshire HOPEs role with each of those looks a little different. Some of them, it’s just showing up and being a good community partner supporting their efforts and helping promote their vigil. For some of the other ones, it’s being more of a hands-on planning partner,” said Kelly. “I think it’s really kind of gaging for each community how Hampshire HOPE can be a resource and a good partner to them in supporting the work that they’re doing for their respective communities.”
Kelly added the month focused on overdose awareness and coinciding vigils are important in helping communities break down stigmas, grieve and come together stronger all in the name of combating the ongoing crisis.
“I think the reality is that we have community members that we’ve lost, and we have community members that have lost loved ones so how do we give and create space to honor the memories and legacies of those who have passed due to opioid overdose or other substance related death,” Kelly said. “I think often it is so stigmatized, so how do we really create intentional space to honor and remember those individuals and also provide support for our community members who are grieving and have lost loved ones and creating space for their individual healing, but also thinking of our collective healing as a community. In doing that, I think it really then does help to push back against and challenge some of the stigma that is so often connected to this work and these experiences.”
She continued, “In doing all that and creating that space for remembrance and healing, I think it’s also a really powerful space to reaffirm our shared commitment to continue doing this work. One life is too many lives lost so how do we continue to push forward in both local efforts, but thinking more broadly whether its regional, statewide or national efforts around harm reduction, recovery support and overdoes prevention. How do we come up with a compass in guiding us forward.”
