Our Mission, Vision, and Values
Mission
We are a community of refuge and healing for people in recovery.
Vision
To be an enlightened community where people in all walks of recovery are empowered to be their best selves.
Values
- Radical Hospitality – Radical Hospitality is our act of gracious, warm, and enduring welcome of all people to ensure a feeling of love and support within our community.
- Loving Accountability – Holding each other accountable to becoming our truest, best selves is the most loving thing we can do for each other.
- Champion for Recovery – We promote lifelong focus on empowering people to reach their full potential and maintain healthy life habits.
- Stewardship – We responsibly manage resources to honor and serve our stakeholders and deepen our impact in the community.
- Inclusive Community –Individuals from all backgrounds are valued and embraced with compassion, mutual respect, and dignity.
Our Challenge
Across the country, the need for substance use and mental health services is growing and not being met. Currently, 22 million people suffer from active substance use disorders and one in three households suffer from, are exposed to, or are otherwise impacted by addiction.
Treatment options are limited and expensive, especially for individuals who are under or uninsured. What’s more, relapse is common even among those who are able to access treatment. Recovery is a life-long commitment that cannot be met by 30-day treatment programs. Where do you go on day 31?
Statewide, fatal drug overdose deaths increased approximately 38% from 2019 to 2020, the largest year-over-year increase in overdose deaths since at least 2000, and higher than the U.S. average increase of 29%. What’s more, 1,287 Coloradons lost their lives to suicide in 2019. This was an increase from the previous year and the highest number ever recorded in the state.
Low-income and individuals experiencing homelessness who struggle with mental health challenges are disproportionately affected. These people often stop taking or lose access to medication, triggering substance use relapse, and lose access to housing, employment, and healthcare services. Without sustained recovery from mental health challenges and addiction, accessing existing housing and social service providers can feel insurmountable – and the struggle to build a healthy life takes time. The National Institute of Health indicates that individuals in recovery from a substance use disorder need a foundation of at least two years of sobriety to ensure long-term recovery. Recovery Café Longmont supports individuals in these years – and beyond – as they rebuild their lives and break the cycle of addiction and mental health challenges.
Recovery Café Longmont is here to help people stay in recovery. We’re here to build a community that provides support and skills for those working to break the cycle of homelessness, addiction, and other mental health challenges.
Our Work
Recovery Café Longmont was founded on the knowledge that every human being is precious and beloved regardless of their past. Individuals interested in joining the Café are invited to become members. Membership signifies belonging – for many of the people we serve, membership is a new and empowering concept. We offer Radical Hospitality to our members regardless of lived trauma, mental and emotional anguish, addictive behaviors, or mistakes made. We provide a beautiful, safe, warm, drug and alcohol-free space and loving community to anchor our members. And, crucially, we help sustain recovery so that members can access housing, social and health services, healthy relationships, education and employment.
The Café is a refuge for everyone in recovery. If someone is in crisis, newer to recovery, in long-term recovery, after a relapse, during a difficult life change, throughout a physical health challenge or mental health transition, Recovery Café offers evidence-based addiction support and love. We teach people ways to manage their mental and physical health, maintain sobriety, build community, and to help each individual reclaim life as a person worthy of giving and receiving love. Through our work, we prevent that individual from another potentially life-ending crisis, saving taxpayer money in emergency intervention to stabilize that person, and allowing mental health and addiction support professionals to focus on health maintenance and addiction prevention.
Our History
The genesis of Recovery Café Longmont is in the commitment by the leadership of CENTRALongmont Presbyterian Church to be as big a blessing to the Longmont community as possible. The church—which partnered in founding St. Vrain Manor, income-based apartments for seniors, and the OUR Center, which has helped meet basic life needs of some of the area’s most vulnerable residents—has a long history of identifying unmet needs in the community and partnering with others to put solutions in place. In 2018, church leadership became aware of the need for a place where individuals in recovery from various addictions could find support, acceptance, and radical hospitality. This led them to the Recovery Café Network, developed from the remarkable success of Recovery Café, founded by Killian Noe in Seattle, Washington. The Network partners with individuals who feel called to establish a Recovery Café in their own communities. Thus, Recovery Café Longmont was born in 2019.
Although CENTRALongmont Presbyterian Church was the impetus to establishing a Recovery Café in Longmont and the Café will be utilizing the basement space of the Church temporarily, the Café is a separate entity from the Church. The Café is not a faith-based organization – all beliefs and faith traditions are welcome.
