Addiction Awareness Day coming to Fountain Park

Sheboygan’s I Love My Addict support group has announced that the second annual Sheboygan Addiction Awareness Event will be 3-7 p.m. Aug. 27 at Fountain Park in Sheboygan.

The mission of the event is to promote a healthy, active lifestyle free of drugs and to bring awareness to the growing drug epidemic. The event helps support the efforts of other community groups in providing educational resources about thegrowingdrugproblem and options for help through a resource fair environment.

Resource fair attendees offering support and services include, but may not be limited to, Nova Counseling, Pathways To A Better Life residential treatment, Step Industries, Recovery Coach Network, and Starting Point.

Stop Heroin Now and Rise Together, two organizations made up of people who travel the country sharing experiences and speaking about finding recovery, also will attend to offer support, resources, education and share stories.

Rise Together is a recovery advocacy initiative of Young People in Recovery that focuses on prevention, education and community outreach. Since its inception, Rise Together has impacted more than 100,000 students at150 schools across the Midwest and, together with YPR, aims to reach more than 250,000 students at 350 schools by the end of 2017.

Started in 2013 by cofounders Anthony Alvarado and Douglas Darby, the team joined Young People in Recovery in early 2016. The group is composed of those in recovery, family members, friends, advocates and professionals within the community. The primary focus is on preventing substance-use disorders and misuse in every community.

This strategic fusion of Young People in Recovery and Rise Together underscores YPR’s commitment to serving adolescents and builds on the organization’s affiliation agreement with the Association of Recovery Schools that was announced in October 2015. Young People in Recovery and Rise Together look forward to working together to increase capacity and support services for youth and create more recovery-ready communities across the nation.

Other speakers may include representatives from local law enforcement, Healthy Sheboygan County 2020, resource fair attendees, people in recovery and family members of those currently in recovery and/or actively using, sharing their stories of hope and loss.

Also being featured at the event will be a memory wall in which families may share pictures of loved ones that are lost but not forgotten. If a family chooses to share a picture, they are asked that it be a copy that can be kept by event coordinators.

Items for purchase include donations of food, raffle baskets and t-shirts.

Proceeds will be used to assist people in finding recovery where possible and to support current or future events to further spread awareness and education.

Kelly Kemps is the founder of I Love My Addict Support Group and coordinator of the annual Addiction Awareness Day Event