by LaMara HunterKelly | Nov 20, 2018 | In The News
Peggy Vezina joins the RECOVER Project with over 20 years’ experience in human services. She has worked throughout the Pioneer Valley in many diverse settings. She especially loved working with youth in the Holyoke, Greenfield and Springfield communities. She has a passion for working with families and learning the supports they need to build communities where children are well loved, cared for and thriving.
Peggy feels blessed to be part of a movement of people who are changing the way we look at the world and how we engage and interact in this world in meaningful ways. What excites her about this position is the opportunity to do what she loves the most. She is a strong advocate for elevating the voices of people who have faced tremendous adversity and creating space where they can flourish and lead. She will continue to foster the development of the peer leader model, focus on staff and peer development and hopes to further integrate the RP into the larger community. Peggy strongly believes there is so much to be learned from and shared by the recovery community.
Peggy and her wife are enjoying the birth of their second grandchild. Peggy loves to travel and to be outdoors. She is very devoted to her cats and cannot get enough time to play ping pong where everything is in play!
by LaMara HunterKelly | Sep 24, 2018 | In The News
[PICTURED] Organizers of last year’s Recovery Jam, run by The RECOVER Project, from left, lead organizer Amie Hyson, Trudy Willis, Pauline Gensen and director Mary Doherty. Staff file photo
Thursday, September 20, 2018
GREENFIELD — For the past 15 years, Recovery Jam, a sober music festival, shows people there is fun in recovery, and celebrates national recovery month in September. The jam is a family-oriented event featuring arts and crafts, activities, music and food.
The 15th annual Recovery Jam sober music festival will be on Saturday from noon to 8 p.m. at Camp Kee-wanee on 1 Health Camp Road in Greenfield. The event is overseen by the RECOVER Project, a peer recovery center in Greenfield.
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![2018 Healthcare Heroes Award for Collaboration in Healthcare]()
by LaMara HunterKelly | Sep 7, 2018 | In The News
Collaboration In Health/Wellness: The Consortium And The Opioid Task Force
By George O’Brien
September 3, 2018
This Unique Initiative Has a Simple Mission: to Save Lives
Larry Thomas remembers not knowing exactly what to say or how to respond.
He had just been encouraged to apply for a job as a peer coordinator and recovery coach for something called the Recover Project, a recovery support center operating in downtown Greenfield under the umbrella of the Western Mass. Training Consortium and funded by the Bureau of Substance Abuse Services in Massachusetts. Thomas paused, because the last job he held was as part of a work-release program operated by the Department of Corrections.
“I had never had a job as a free man, applying on my own,” he explained. “When they posted the job, people said I should apply. I said, ‘maybe I should, but I don’t even have a résumé.’ I did apply, but I was scared to put down the last place I worked, because I was still in jail.’”
Thomas, in applying and then earning the job, essentially put his past behind him and focused on solidifying his future, which is, by and large, what he encourages others to do as a recovery coach. He takes his ‘lived experience’ — that’s a phrase you’ll read often in this article — and puts it to work helping others combating addiction and trying to put their lives back together.
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by LaMara HunterKelly | Mar 16, 2018 | In The News
By JOSHUA SOLOMON, Greenfield Recorder
Friday, March 16, 2018
GREENFIELD — The RECOVER Project is holding its second annual pancake breakfast fundraiser this morning at The Episcopal Church of Saints James and Andrew on Church Street. The event will run from 8 to 11 a.m. and tickets cost $6 for adults, $5 for seniors, $3 for children ages four to 10 and free for those three and under.
“Its not just people in recovery that attend,” organizer and The RECOVER Project member Rachel Dillenback said. She added communities can come together over the pancakes and the event helps to break down stigma of recovery. It’s also “important for us to get awareness out to people in recovery and get the word out.”
Her organizing partner Josh Stafford added, “We just want anybody to know that any problems they’re having, The RECOVER Project can help.”
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by LaMara HunterKelly | Sep 8, 2017 | In The News
Greenfield, MA – September 8, 2017
Mary Doherty comes to the RECOVER Project Director’s role with a diverse range of work and life experiences, with recovery at the center of it all. For years she has balanced work, family and recovery, and it brings her great joy to share what she has learned with others on the journey. She is a problem solver and approaches life and work with a sense of adventure and wonder. She earned a Ph.D. in organismic and evolutionary biology as a single mom, which included taking road trips for hundreds of miles to collect samples from the coast of Maine with her young daughter often jumping in as a field assistant. As a scientist, she has collaborated on and taken the lead with large-scale research projects in Oceans, Estuaries and Rivers. Through these experiences, she was able to develop her project management skills, all while having the opportunity to work and live in places with the natural world at the center and building community with other recovering people.
Mary has also been a dedicated teacher. She earned her M.Ed. at the University of Massachusetts through the 180 Days in Springfield Project, and has taught in Holyoke and Sharon Public Schools, as well as at the college level and in Adult Basic Education. As an educator, she has been dedicated to creating academic spaces that are welcoming, inclusive, and encouraging of many means of access to achievement. Her own recovery practice has always been central to her work. It has allowed her to relate easily with diverse constituencies, to view her students from a holistic standpoint, and to help them identify and draw on the strengths they possess.
Mary is a community builder, and has been able to relocate and rebuild a supportive recovery community for herself in rural South Georgia, the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and in Memphis Tennessee, but she prefers Western Massachusetts as her home, and it has been so for the majority of her time in recovery. She is extremely excited to serve as the Director of the RECOVER Project, where she can apply her professional strengths and life experience to a cause she wholeheartedly believes in.
Mary can be reached at mdoherty@wmtcinfo.org as of September 5th or feel free to stop by 68 Federal Street to say hello!
To find out more about the RECOVER Project, go to www.recoverproject.org. The RECOVER Project is a program of The Western Massachusetts Training Consortium, funded by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Bureau of Substance Abuse Services.
