Outreach 297 Stories of Recovery: Finding Hope and Help

In the past several years Appalachian Regional Library public libraries of Ashe, Watauga, & Wilkes Counties, North Carolina has emphasized health & wellness topics in its programming. Last year, we implemented our 1st Good Neighbor Project, Cracked, Not Broken. This project combined community read activities & community engagement activities with the goal of educating people about suicide prevention & providing avenues of engagement for those interested in helping combat suicide & mental illness. We featured Kevin Hines book, Cracked, Not Broken, a story of attempted suicide & a life-long struggle with mental illness. Hines spoke in our three counties, & we brought his film to the area. Multiple partners, primarily mental health agencies, provided free programming for us. Using NNLM funding, ARL and multiple local partners will present its 2nd Good Neighbor Project, Stories of Recovery: Finding Hope & Help. We will offer programs during September-November on topics related to recovering from addiction to alcohol or drugs. Our goal is to promote the hope for recovery, & advertise the many treatment & recovery resources available to people suffering from addiction in our service area. We will feature Dana Bowman & her memoir of being a young mother & an alcoholic Bottled as our community read. She will speak in all our counties, & we will buy multiple copies of her book to distribute. Bowmans story will provide a jumping off point for the many programs we will offer both at our libraries & other venues, before & after her presentations. We will raise awareness of the prevalence of addiction & at the same time educate folks about the many resources available & how to find them -- that provide help in recovery. We plan to show the film The Anonymous People, an independent feature documentary about Americans living in long-term recovery from alcohol & other drug addictions that aims to end discrimination & move our society toward recovery-based solutions.