Shelby Young

Festival Health Coordinator, AB

Shelby Young is a Licenced Practical Nurse and the Founder of Indigo Harm Reduction Services based out of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Shelby has been an avid festival attendee and member of the EDM community for over a decade in Western Canada.

In 2015 Shelby, started to notice the lack of harm reduction programs that support the nightlife, festival and large event industries in the Province of Alberta. When Shelby noticed a health need within Alberta, she wanted to bring change by establishing an organization that empowers “party-goers” or “festival-goers” to embrace harm reduction strategies. Shelby wanted to help reduce the risk associated with such industries and bring awareness to the current contamination and poisoning of substances in our country.

The province of Alberta has embraced Indigo’s philosophy of care and have been tremendously successful in working with both provincial and municipal governments. Shelby has been an influential part of creating new bylaws in regards to safer events within the city of Edmonton. In February 2020, the City of Edmonton will be the first municipality where, by law, on-site harm reduction will be a requirement to obtain an event license.

Indigo started collaborating with Odyssey on their Festival Health Program in 2017 and Shelby was pulled into this fun, crazy, loving  medicine event family that has so much passion for creating safer events across Canada. It was only natural for her to bring the Indigo program over to Odyssey’s umbrella to help coordinate the  Festival Health program in Alberta. Shelby helps ensure the success of the festival health program by managing the volunteer educational program, keeping the team up to date with the latest harm reduction strategies, curating the educational materials for the space, handling administration work, delivering the substance checking program and generally overseeing the festival health program in Alberta. Shelby’s role is still growing in Odyssey and she is looking forward to what the future holds with her team!

Outside of working with Indigo, Shelby brings her philosophy of harm reduction into her nursing care in one of Edmonton’s busiest emergency departments.