Opening the Recovery Tent:
Changes in Peer Support Services for 2025!
Embracing change is essential for any organization looking to thrive. Starting something new—whether it’s launching a project or shifting strategy—sparks innovation, bringing fresh ideas and perspectives that drive progress. Change builds resilience, helping teams adapt to challenges and navigate the unexpected with confidence.
It also boosts engagement by breaking routines and creating a sense of purpose. Energized teams are more motivated and invested in the organization’s success. Most importantly, change can unlock growth opportunities and strengthen company culture, ensuring the organization stays relevant and competitive in an evolving world.
In NMSAS’ Peer Recovery Support Services, the changes being made are being done to help “open the recovery tent” (a phrase used by our former director, Sue Winter) to as many people as possible in order to strengthen the recovery community and movement. There are several changes happening this fiscal year (October 1, 2024-September 30, 2025) here in NMSAS Peer Recovery Support Services that we want to make you aware of!
First, let’s start with what is changing in our weekly Zoom meetings. Our Coach Check-In, All-Recovery Hours and Virtually Inspired Recovery started during Covid and thrived during the time when people got
together primarily over Zoom. Since the ending of the Covid-19 Pandemic attendance and effectiveness of our online support dwindled. In 2024-25 we wanted to make a shift toward more in-person support and connection.
This meant moving our weekly Zoom Coach Check-In to bi-weekly in-person meetings! So, we are going “On the Road…” starting in October, where we will meet up with coaches in various counties for coffee, socializing, listening, supporting and connecting! Check out our Facebook Page to learn more about these events each month!
We continued to shift gears from doing our Virtually Inspired Recovery Series every Wednesday over Zoom to developing a monthly Virtual Webinar Series! These webinars are focused on bringing in qualified guests to teach on an array of topics related to the recovery community. You can visit our Events page to see the latest Webinar and sign-up!
What about all the previous recordings from the Virtually Inspired Recovery series? What happened to them? Glad you asked! We are in the process of transferring them over to the new website where they will be categorized for easier access! You can check out the ones we have ready here.
We also stopped having paid staff host our twice-a-week All-Recovery Hours. We have links to many meeting resources on our Resource Page to help people find a meeting and pathway that they can connect to. Our hope is that eventually trained volunteers can use our Zoom account to host online meetings, should the need arise!
One thing we are not changing is offering recovery coach and recovery community training! In fact, we are increasing the number of times we do some classes and adding NEW classes to the mix! Here, take a look:
You can see here that we increased the number of times we are holding Professionalism and BASICS. These were only offered once last fiscal year. We also going to offer Storytelling (stay tuned!) as well as Recovery Coaching in the Justice System! In order to be a volunteer recovery coach you need to take the Recovery Coach Academy (RCA) and Ethical Considerations for Recovery Coaches (Ethics). Traditionally we have included an orientation segment in our Ethics class, but now that is going to be moved to an actual Orientation that we are offering several times/year in which other volunteer paths can join in on (more on that here in a minute).
Speaking on volunteering. In the past we focused primarily on volunteer recovery coaches, and that isn’t going to change, but we are going to be expanding our volunteer reach by introducing new paths to become a volunteer on!
Whether you want to be a recovery coach, an Advocate, or maybe just be an Ally we have a path for you to become volunteer with us! You do not want to become a recovery coach, but still help NMSAS fulfill its mission? Great! Become a Sunflower and volunteer in various roles! What this also means is that our classes and trainings do not just apply to recovery coaching! As an Advocate, Ally or Sunflower you will be able to take various trainings to help you evolve and learn in the areas you want to!
Maybe you’re here to become a recovery coach, great! We have made some adjustments to how this process works and our requirements to be a volunteer coach. You can read about it in detail here, as well as consider the path below.
We also simplified the application process to take the Recovery Coach Academy! In the past a potential coach would go through the steps of filling out a volunteer application, do a background check and an interview. All of these steps are still important in order to volunteer with us as a coach, but to get into the Academy, you need to provide us with some basic information and schedule a time to meet with our Peer Support Coordinator to discuss your next steps!
Once you take the Recovery Coach Academy and still want to move forward with being a volunteer recovery coach, then you take Ethics and apply to be a volunteer! You can start that journey here.
Hopefully this helps clarify some of the changes being made in the coming year. Maybe this created more questions, and you need more clarification? If that is the case, we are a text, phone call, or email away! Text/call 989-370-5619 or email tneal@nmsas.org!
