MSTH Connects: Reframing Public Understanding as Harm Reduction: Teaching Science to Transform Community Care
What happens when we change the way we understand substance use — and the people behind it?
Join us on November 7, 2026 at 9 am PT/10am MT/11am CT/11am ET/12 Noon. Victor will explore how education itself can be a form of harm reduction. Drawing from lived experience, frontline work, and the science of substance use and drug poisoning, he examines some of the assumptions and narratives that shape how communities respond to people who use substances.
The conversation looks at stigma, trauma, the unregulated drug supply, opioid poisoning and naloxone, and what research can teach us about substance use and addiction. At its heart is a larger question: what becomes possible when we replace fear and judgment with understanding, connection, and care?
About Victor Mondaca
Victor Mondaca is a Mapuche community leader, educator, speaker, and Co-Founder of Nahuen Consultation, a Winnipeg-based social impact organization focused on building safer, more connected communities through education, harm reduction, empathy, and community care.
Drawing from lived experience of mental health challenges, substance use disorder, and recovery, alongside years of frontline and leadership work supporting people experiencing homelessness, substance use, and complex barriers, Victor brings a deeply human perspective to conversations about substance use, stigma, healing, and belonging.
Through Nahuen Consultation, Victor develops and facilitates training, presentations, and community conversations that bring together evidence, lived and frontline experience, and Indigenous ways of knowing. His work challenges stigma and encourages people to look beyond labels and behaviours to see the whole person, while exploring what becomes possible when healing is understood not only as an individual journey, but as something shaped by our relationships and the communities we create together.
Alongside his work with Nahuen, Victor serves in an executive leadership role with N’Dinawemak – Our Relatives’ Place.
At the heart of Victor’s work is a belief that guides Nahuen: We belong to each other.
