Tickets are still available for the Northern Colorado AIDS Project‘s annual Sowing Seeds of Change reception at Bath Garden Center in Fort Collins.

Tickets are available by clicking here.

The event starts at 6, but at 7:30 p.m., “let your inner diva shine and get your karaoke on!” organizers said. The money helps people in northern Colorado living with or affected by HIV/AIDS and other conditions, as well as programs around prevention.

The second annual reception includes appetizers, desserts and drinks. Guests are told to wear “your favorite gender-affirming cocktail attire.”

“Funding for services for stigmatized populations, like people who inject drugs and people living with HIV, has historically been very difficult to come by,” Rebecca Cranston, NCAP’s executive director, told Colorado Politics in an e-mail. “We have seen a 50 percent increase this year in people injecting drugs; in the past two months, we have enrolled 14 new people living next year into our case management services.

“Even with more nationwide attention on the astronomical increases in injection drug use (and the increase in overdose, spread of infectious disease, and social isolation that comes with it), organizations like NCAP that focus on providing stigma-free services to these populations struggle to meet the evolving and growing needs. Events like Sowing the Seeds of Change help us to continue to provide compassionate services.”

The organization also helps provide a pipeline for people affected by opioid and methamphetamine use, getting them enrolled in care and services. It also now has a team providing behavioral health therapy and case management wraparound services for clients who inject drugs.

In March NCAP will start medication-assisted therapy to help clients wean off drugs.

“Our big audacious goal is that people in our community affected by drug use can receive compassionate care free from stigma, regardless of at what point of the sobriety continuum they are at,” NCAP stated.