Our Director Machteld Busz becomes homelessness strategist

Machteld Busz (‘Mac’) is stepping down as director of Mainline. For twelve years she has dedicated herself to people who use drugs and to harm reduction. Now she is moving to the City of Amsterdam as their homelessness strategist, to improve the living conditions of marginalised people on the streets.

Machteld Busz: ‘When I started at Mainline twelve years ago, our domestic team was looking to applying harm reduction to support people who were using new drugs (besides heroin) in other ways (besides injecting). Harm reduction was firmly on the agenda with support from the Dutch government. Now, our team is needed more than ever to voice the unadulterated harm reduction voice in the Netherlands, and we are reaching a range of new groups of people who use drugs, despite the proposed cuts to our work. I hope that in the coming years, harm reduction will again have the place it deserves, with sufficient resources and with the full positive impact this approach brings.’

Commenting on Machteld’s departure, Ancella Voets, head of the Knowledge, Learning and Partnerships programme, contemplates: ‘I fear we will have to hire at least three people to replace Mac. She has been invaluable to our organisation, and we will miss her terribly. But harm reduction is a part of Mac, she will certainly take that into her new work. And Mainline will, of course, continue to work with the same passion to keep harm reduction on the agenda.’

Read Machtelds farewell-interview (in Dutch) in Binnenlands Bestuur here.