Last week, five groups from Washington State and California came together at Recovery Café in Seattle to launch the Inaugural Recovery Café Network Cohort with the goal to open Recovery Cafés in their cities. Groups from Spokane, Tacoma, Vancouver (WA), Everett and San Jose (CA) joined the charter two-year cohort. Each group brings dedication to support the recovery journey as well as years of experience in the social services field. This two day training was the culmination of countless hours of hard work and a lot of heart.
When asked about the new effort, Founding Director Killian Noe stated “Our mission is to create places that welcome women and men who have suffered homelessness, addiction, and other mental health challenges into a community that will provide them with the foundation of sustained recovery needed for them to gain and maintain access to housing, social and health services, healthy relationships, education and employment.”
During the two day training, cohort groups learned the basics of Recovery Café’s peer support model including:
- Peer facilitated support groups called Recovery Circles
- How to create a welcoming and healing setting for all people to thrive
- Fundraising
- Monitoring and evaluation of programming to demonstrate impact
- Creating a robust volunteer program that reduces stigma and building cross socio-economic community
At Recovery Café, we are thankful for the numerous women and men that have supported our healing community over the last dozen years. From volunteering and donating to advocacy and accompaniment, we couldn’t have launched this new initiative without the strong support of so many in the Puget Sound region and friends from across the United States.