This Wednesday, The Center for Hope Peer Recovery Center will host a community conversation. It will address the stigma of addiction and recovery with the hope of creating a space where such matters can be discussed safely.
Andra Smith Hansen, a faculty lead of organizational leadership at BYU-Idaho, works with a lot of local organizations, including The Center for Hope. As one of the event’s organizers, Hansen says she believes in collective problem solving and peaceful resolution of sensitive topics in the community.
“For years I’ve been intrigued by principles of communication that can create dialogue, exchange of ideas, nonpartisan discussion around issues that impact us as a community and thus individual members of it,” said Hansen.
Hansen says there are four purposes behind throwing these conversations.
“So, reducing stigma so that we can see people as people and talk about this and see their human potential. I think it’s a big one. The second thing with a community conversation is that we can just better understand the need … and what is the scope of that … and then another one is bringing different community members together,” Hansen said. “The goal is to really facilitate networking and collaboration between parties … and then lastly it’s to identify next step actions like are there things that we could be doing,” Hansen said.
Hansen continues, saying that members of the community have power to positively affect the world around them.
“Part of the goal of a community conversation of this sort is to help people realize there’s a lot that each of us can do. We don’t have to wait for a law or a legislative process to take place before there’s constructive steps that we can take. But we often don’t identify those or know what they are,” Hansen said.
Hansen says that all are welcome to bring their insights and curiosity to the conversation.
“People say, well, I’m not an expert. I don’t know, what is that? Or I’m not struggling with that, so why would I come? This is genuinely about just understanding each other around this important issue. So it’s truly a conversation,” Hansen said.
The conversation will be put on at Madison Memorial Hospital from 7 to 9 p.m. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to Andra Smith Hansen at 208-589-7759.