Western Maine Addiction Recovery Initiative
Mollyockett Motel
May 3rd, 2017
6:00 Welcome and Introductions: Travis, Bill, Becky, Warren, Brendan, Taylor, Jen, Nancy, Matt, Nikki
6:05 Financial Report: $3246.98, Went to the credit union to see about changing the name. They suggested we wait to see if we plan to do a 501C3, then change everything at once.
6:10 Sub Committee Report Outs:
Recovery Coach committee: Haven’t met since the last meeting. We need to talk about targeted fundraising for that. We need to raise the total amount by June. The cost is $1200 for each person being trained. We have drafted a letter asking for donations that people can personalize. They will cancel the course by June 1st if they don’t have enough people.
Organizations we might ask: Maine Community Foundation – Brendan and Becky can look into this.
This is a lot of money to send people to attend the train the trainer. Should we be asking for some type of commitment from the people that we send to training. For example, do we ask that they commit to come to a number of meetings, or that they will hold a given number of trainings for coaches, etc. At least a conversation about what WMARI’s expectations will be once we invest that amount of money in their training. Perhaps have a Memo of Understanding with those we send to training so that the expectations is very clear.
We want to be able to have local trainings so that we can have enough coaches for our area. We are now having more calls than we were, and as we get more coaches, we will get more calls. 20 coaches for our area might be a good number. The majority of calls tend to be weekends. We can rotate people through weekends, and/or through north and south catchment areas. Darren suggests that 12 people is ideal, but you can have eight. It might be tough to get that many at once, but if we are able to get at least a few at a time (even 5 or 6) in the beginning, then it is worth training those people. We want to stick to the 30 hour training so that they can provide more support than just the initial contact. We don’t want to water down the training just to get people on board.
Even if we can’t get all of the money needed to send four people, we would still like to send as many as we can so that we get trainers on board.
Expectations: Three trainings in 18 months. These trainings can be co-taught depending on numbers of people interested in being trained. As we have trainings and publicize trainings, we may get more interest. If we want to have 20 consistent coaches, we need to train 30-40 people.
We’ve already made the decision that WMARI will use our current funds to pay for the training if we don’t have enough money raised through other fundraising efforts. We encourage anyone who is on facebook, to share our gofundme page on their personal webpage to get the word out that we need money!
We have four people identified for the training. There needs to be a process to identify who will go if we have only enough money to send two people. We need to look at capacity and commitment to the expectations.
Taylor suggested that we have other subcommittee created: Education/MeHAF Grant Work Plan (headed by MJ Brown mj@healthyoxfordhills.org, Nancy, Travis, Becky), Project SaveME website (Kelly West, Brendan). We also have a Recovery Rally subcommittee.
We have $3000 for marketing and bringing people into WMARI, $1500 for coordinator for recovery rally, $300 for materials. WMARI would be the group to decide who would be the person who gets paid for the coordiation of the recovery rally. We could also pay someone for an hour a week to keep the website updated.
Recovery Rally: Met last week. 7 or 8 people were there! Taylor created a “From start to finish” book. We need to choose a date. So far, September 9th seems best. The 23rd is the second best date. We need to book Moore Park, ask the church to use their steps. We should check to see who owns the property across the street. It would be nice to be able to shuffle people over to the other side of the road into the empty lot and have coffee, donuts, a sign-up sheet. We also need more PR. We had no real news coverage other than a person taking pictures. We need to reach out to media contacts to get them there. Matt will contact Torrey Riden with Channel 6. If we all initially pool together who we have for contacts, and get the names to Brendon. He will then reach out to invite people to our events and he can also put out press releases. Taylor has added her press contacts to the Recovery Rally binder. We could get some pictures from last year’s rally and write up a press release about the beginning of our planning for next years recovery rally.
6:40 New, Project Save ME & Other Updates
June 10th: Walk for Recovery, Beginning at Hosmer Field in Rumford. People interested in participating, contact Allie Burke (rvhccburke@gwi.net) or Jake Santillo at 418-0300. They are looking to have a barbecue, booths for community organizations and resources, and speakers. Donations are welcome.
7:00 Spotlight – 211
Nikki Busmanis, 2-1-1 Maine Program Manager, nbusmanis@211maine.org, 207-873-0686
What is it?
- Free & confidential service – connects people to health and human services
- Stateside directory with 8000 resources
- 24 hour call center accessible state-wide, with local information
- 211maine.org
Why and how to access?
- Call – Dial 2-1-1 to connect with an information specialist
7:30 Adjourn
Next Meeting: June 7th, 6:00 – 7:30 pm, Mollyocket Motel