On March 26 Recovery Café held its annual Faithful Friends event to thank those who make our efforts possible. To everyone who attended and to those who couldn’t make it, we sincerely appreciate your ongoing support of Recovery Café. Without you, our community would be so much smaller and so much less. This year’s event featured a moving talk from Killian, Recovery Café Member Fale sharing their story, and an awards presentation to a few of our most dedicated supporters.
Faithful Friends is an event designed to thank all our contributors. One of the highlights was recognizing one of our Members for his contribution to our community through the Contribution of Excellence Award. David Macready was this year’s recipient because of his continued commitment to engaging with our community in a positive and helpful way. If you visit the Café any day before we open, you might mistake David Macready for a staff member. He’s here, working hard at getting the Café ready for the day. And once the Café opens, he’s still working hard, making sure everything stays in order. And at the end of the day, he’s still here, making sure everything is cleaned and put back in the right space. A Member since 2012, David devotes hours of his time each week to make sure the Café runs smoothly. His dedication and hard work allows the staff to focus on more immediate tasks, knowing full well that the Café is in David’s good hands.
We presented the Visionary Founder award to two community partners whose efforts have made our work easier and more productive:
- Perkins Coie has been a fundamental partner to Recovery Café, providing support in numerous critical ways including, but not limited to, Sponsoring Standing in the Gap, consistently hosting at least 1 table at Standing in the Gap, making financial gifts, and especially their pro bono legal support. The Café would not be where it is today without the incredible legal brilliance and generosity of the Perkins Coie Team.
- The St Joseph’s Church Community has been contributing to the life of the Café in countless ways for more than a decade; notably hosting the Thanksgiving Open Mic Night with the most incredible generosity of spirit, food, and kindness. So many of our Members have remarked that this is the best meal of the year!
We presented the Executive Director Gratitude Award to two partners who really have expanded our capacity to make our community sustainable and far-reaching:
- Jim Vollendroff has been a friend, a champion, and a treasured member of the Recovery Café community for years. Jim has anchored ourSpeak Out for Recovery event since we first launched it 4 years ago with King County. In his role as the Director of the King County Behavioral Health and Recovery Division, Jim has been a great source of advice and support regarding King County funding streams. During Jim’s tenure, King County made a 7-year funding commitment for operating support which gave Recovery Café the necessary inspiration and motivation to secure a second site in SODO. Jim was also instrumental in securing funding for the Washington Recovery Alliance (WRA). The WRA is a statewide Recovery Advocacy coalition initiated by Recovery Café in 2014. It is not an exaggeration to state that Jim, through his work at King County, to build a more responsive, effective and person-centered behavioral health system and now his work as the Director of the UW Medicine Behavioral Health Institute/Harborview Medical Center, has and will continue to positively impact thousands of lives affected by substance use and other mental health challenges.
- Since 2011 the Satterberg Foundation has been instrumental in creating the success Recovery Café has today. The Foundation’s first 2 grants to the Café helped launch Agency, our Member database. This system not only helps us track Members’ involvement at the Café, including circle and class attendance, it also allows us to quantitatively show our impact on the hundreds of individuals who walk through our doors each year, thus helping secure additional funding for the Café. The Satterberg Foundation is also leading the way in providing grants that are both impactful and manageable for the Café. These large-capacity, unrestricted grants provide the resources and flexibility for Recovery Café to achieve extraordinary things. We are so grateful for the long-term, committed support from the Satterberg Foundation!
Thank you to all of this year’s award recipients for the support you have given and the gifts that are yet to come!