eNewsletter: May 4, 2007Faces & Voices Message and Media Training
Save the dates of June 22-23, 2007 for our next message and media training in Denver, CO. Details to follow. Almost 1000 recovery advocates have participated in this exciting training. Click here for more details.
National “Parity Day” success!
Thanks to everyone who got in touch with their members of Congress on May 2nd, when Representatives Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) and Jim Ramstad (R-MN) were joined by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Leaders and over a dozen House colleagues on Capitol Hill rally support for H.R. 1424, the "The Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act.” Learn More…
Rally for Recovery! September 15th
Saturday, September 15, 2007 is Rally for Recovery! day across the country as part of National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month. To join our organizing network to strategize with other recovery community organizations who are using this event to raise the national profile of recovery and recovery advocacy, email National Field Director Tom Coderre.
Missouri Recovery Advocates Letters to the Editor Success
When Missouri Recovery Network (Jefferson City chapter) advocates decided to do a letter writing campaign, they made it the activity for a meeting and provided background materials and information right there. Faces & Voices of Recovery board member Judie Didricksen reports that they had examples of past letters on hand as well as background information on poster board with bullet points so that people could pick and choose what they wanted to include in their letters. They offered to send in letters that were written at the meeting and encouraged people who couldn’t make the meeting to write their letters from home and send them in. Some of the individuals who wrote letters did not wish to break their anonymity so they wrote their letters as parents of concerned teen-agers.
The result: seven letters to the editor were published in the Jefferson City News Tribune during the month of April and on the last Sunday of the month, the newspaper editor wrote an opinion piece in the local section of the paper, applauding the letters and their commitment to recovery. Click here to read the letters. Faces & Voices’ sample letters to the editor has how-to information for writing and sending in letters to the editor.
Maryland restores voting rights for many
On July 1, 2007 a Maryland law will go into effect that reverses the state’s lifetime voting ban for people with drug convictions. The new law will make more than 50,000 Marylanders eligible to vote. Listen to Faces & Voices’ webinar on the restoration of voting rights.
Resources
Report from CSAT National Summit on Recovery is a follow-up to a September 2005 conference sponsored by the federal government’s the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT). The agency convened over 100 stakeholders to discuss and identify guiding principles of recovery and elements of recovery-oriented systems for care for people with substance use disorders. This was the first time a broad-based consensus on guiding principles of recovery and elements of recovery-oriented systems of care was achieved on a national level.
Check out Stopandstartover.org, a new recovery-oriented web site that grew out of a thesis project. The site is oriented toward younger people. “Recovery is a way of life. You don’t just check into rehab with a drug or alcohol problem and get better by the time your stay is over. You don’t just go to a few twelve-step meetings and get sober. Recovery is about learning to live your life in a new way, without a crutch. It’s about developing a network of sober friends, people who you can talk with and relate to. It’s about creating a new life.”
