WHO WE ARE?
Nightlife Empowerment & Well-being Network (NewNet)
NEW Net is a European network of community-based NGOs acting in the fields of health promotion and nightlife, of nightlife professionals, local and regional authorities and agencies, treatment professionals and scientific researchers.
The NEW Net is issued from the Nightlife Empowerment & Well-being Implementation Project (2011-2013) based on the alliance of the Basics Network with the Democracy, Cities & Drugs Safer Nightlife Platform:
Created in 1998, the members of the Basics Network "for dance culture and drug awareness" are European peer projects issued from party scenes with the aim of promoting health and harm reduction in the recreational settings. The Basics Network led a practice sharing project in 2001-2002.
From 2005 to 2011, the Democracy, Cities & Drugs projects aimed to help EU cities in developing local, integrated and partnership based municipal drug policies and practices in the field of drugs. In this framework of these projects, the Safer Nightlife platform, gathering 16 local health promotion NGOs and 7 European cities and regions, has produced guidelines, a digital library, videos, etc.
OUR SHARED AIMS
- Promoting individual choice and party-related risks awareness.
- Enabling people to manage their personal pleasure and related risks in a proper, well-informed way which fits into their life's concepts.
- Enabling people to find their own decision and give them the necessary support to follow their way.
- Promoting community health by developing empowerment of drug users, partygoers and nightlife professionals to participate in drug policies and practices including active participation in integrated partnerships at local level.
- Improving safer recreational settings through the participation of nightlife professional.
- Taking an active role within the scientific community: contributing to the needs assessment in terms of research and to the dissemination of scientific data.
- Contributing to the cultural development of the party scenes
OUR OBJECTIVES
To promote safer nightlife policies and practices based on integrated partnerships including all the nightlife stakeholders: nightlife professionals, peers, harm reduction NGOs, public institutions, scientific community, etc.
Exchange and acquiring information, know-how and tools in order to improve our interventions and propose responses to the new challenges in the fields of harm reduction and health promotion among party scenes;
Support the emergence of local nightlife projects in Europe;
Take part and influence the European nightlife policies (advocacy, conferences).
OUR ETHICAL FRAMEWORK
The ethical framework in which the NEWIP partners operates is based on:
The Basics Network charter:
- All actions are based on party goers’ and drug users’ needs and experiences.
- Differences concerning lifestyles, especially in the areas of sexuality and drug use, are explicitly accepted.
- We exercise confidentiality in our dealing with people who contact our services.
- We promote the principle of transparency in providing objective information about sexuality and drug use.
