OUR PURPOSE
Like people everywhere, we are hungry for a human-sized community — a place where we can find and nurture one another as we work to recover from all that life drops at our feet. Recovering from trauma, substance use issues, and loss in all its forms is possible, we believe, only in community.
We're a new nonprofit organization located on Whidbey Island in the state of Washington, USA. We're part of the Recovery Café Network, click this logo to learn more:
OUR INITIAL GOALS
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Open a new Recovery Café in South Whidbey this spring
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Implement the Recovery Café Model
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Welcome members, visitors, guests and volunteers to our space two days per week for three hours each day
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Serve nutritious food each day we're open
OUR CORE COMMITMENTS
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Create a community space that is drug- and alcohol-free, embracing, and healing
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Nurture structures of loving accountability called Recovery Circles
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Empower every Member to be a contributor
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Raise up Member leaders
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Ensure responsible stewardship
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Work to end systemic racism, socioeconomic inequality, and oppression of any individual or identity group by holding spaces that are profoundly loving, inclusive, and honoring of all
We are looking for Community Volunteers to serve in important roles for our Café.
We believe that service is a mutual act, supporting both the person serving and the person who is served.
This article, Helping, Fixing or Serving may help you to know if being a Community Volunteer fits you.
WE NEED COMMUNITY VOLUNTEERS!
CAFÉ COMPANION
Companions are vital. They help to keep the cafe a safe space, where relationships that cross typical economic, class, racial, and religious boundaries can form and thrive.
FOOD COORDINATOR
We'll be purchasing prepared food to be served each day we're open. This role will ensure that the food is ordered, transported and served properly. A Washington State Food Worker Card is required.
VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR
The Coordinator will work with volunteers to make sure they're aware of all the ways they can be part of making our Cafe work. They'll match volunteers to tasks and maintain schedules.
WEBMASTER AND SOCIAL MEDIA
This person will create and maintain content for our website. They'll use social media platforms to keep our existing staff, volunteers, and members informed, and to attract visitors and potential new members.
SPACE COORDINATOR
This Coordinator will ensure that our space is properly set up and taken down on the days we're open. They'll be responsible for communication with our landlord as needed.
RECOVERY CAFÉ MEMBERSHIP
A Recovery Café is not a drop-in center. Instead, it seeks to create communities of belonging and mutual accountability.
Anyone can visit as a guest up to three times; if they like what they find, they can join and become members of the community by agreeing to meet three requirements:
Be drug and alcohol free in our Recovery Café space
Participate in a weekly Recovery Circle
Contribute to the Café community
The membership structure is not a rigid barrier—it's both an invitation to be part of our community and a tool that helps keep the community healthy.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE RECOVERY CAFÉ MODEL
Recovery Cafés are healing spaces for individuals seeking recovery from anything that blocks one’s capacity to love and be loved. By practicing Loving Accountability and Radical Hospitality, a community is formed where everyone is deeply known and loved.
The Recovery Café is not a restaurant or a soup kitchen, and it’s not a place with the sole purpose of making sure desperate people have access to hot food.
We plan and prepare and share meals because that is a way humans have been forming community since the dawn of our history. Each day we’re open we’ll be serving tasty, nutritious food to Café members, volunteers, and guests, at no cost.
We’ll be slowly building the bonds of trust that are at the heart of the Recovery Café experience.
Each Café follows the basic membership model, yet each one is unique in the way it grows and flourishes, reflecting the values of its own larger community.
We love South Whidbey, and can’t wait to see our Café doing just that.