Housing, treating and supporting people with addictions, Calgary’s Fresh Start Recovery is committed to recovering lives and providing concrete solutions to long-standing issues. Executive Director Stacey Peterson explains the organization’s straightforward yet far-reaching mission and why, when it comes down to it, it’s “the people” and “attitude” that make all the difference.

What’s the biggest challenge moving forward?

We started to build a new building. We purchased land in 2007 and are just getting the roof on. It’s a 40,000 square feet, 50-bed facility. So, as far as challenges go, it’s maintaining continuity while building this new centre and embarking on a $12.5 million capital campaign. But we have a ton of fun. Humour is a huge healer, you know, and I’ve adopted the Patch Adams philosophy…approaching challenges with optimism and enthusiasm. It helps to motivate people. There will always be someone who points out problems but you need to approach it with solutions, optimism and enthusiasm.

It can be a little manic at times but we’re only able to do what we can do today. And there are so many exciting and amazing things coming to us. I also think that it’s important to love what you do. If you don’t, there won’t be enthusiasm. For example, if you love your family, you will probably do what you can to look after them. Attitude makes a huge difference, too. If you’re grateful — my staff talks about that all the time — that energy gets transferred into attitude.

Yeah, okay this is tough, it’s hard and it hurts a lot but we’re going to walk with you to the wall; you don’t have to live that blueprint the rest of your life. It’s not going to take you as near as long to recover compared to what your head tells you.

The team seems to be a really invaluable asset — tell us more about how that works.

We have an incredible team who are invested in the recovery of the people we serve. There are 18 staff now and we’ll be ramping up to 24 with the new building. They take full ownership of the program; no one’s dictating what they need to do. The other part is everyone on the team is in recovery, myself included. We have over 200 years of recovery on our team. So when I am sitting across the table and some guy says, “oh what do you know?” I say “well, let me tell you.”

Honestly, it’s the people. Not the building, though it’s wonderful to have a new facility. When I hire people, I look for heart. You can have paperwork coming out of the yin yang but you’re a baboon working with people. I look for heart, loyalty and transferable skills. If you have that, we can get you the education; that’s just knowledge dump.

Above that, I’m most proud of the culture we’ve been able to develop. The respect that is felt across the board between residents and staff is great. Also we have alumni meetings, we didn’t have that before I came — and that’s key.

Of course, we’re all human. In a family when there are issues and there’s communication, there’s acknowledgment of the problem – and it provides a strong message around solutions. And hope.

You’re now an award-winning organization, undoubtedly you’ve learned some lessons along the way…

Regardless of industry, but particularly in human services, people become jaded fast and get burnt out because it takes a lot of energy. One of the biggest things is to have your own backyard cleaned up before trying to clean up someone else’s. If you can look at yourself emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually, that has to be first. If you do those things, you have energy.

The other part is you’re only human; you can only do what you can do. You’ll never be able to come with solutions sitting in the middle of insanity, churning about. You don’t get solution from that — but when you move out of the problem and focus on finding a solution, you’ll get there quicker.

And we can’t do it alone. We need to collaborate.

Do you feel collaboration is where it should be? If not, what’s stopping it?

A lot of people don’t because of fear and territorialism, ego, whatever you want to call it. But if your guiding principle is the best possible outcome for everybody you serve, you can’t go wrong with that. We do a lot of collaboration, with government etc., working together toward a common solution. At the end of the day everybody wants the same thing, we all want to help.

Over the years, there’s been a lot of fear and competition and that had everything to do with funding. But we’re not interested in that. You watch the people who focused their energy on that and they lose. Wherever you put your energy, that’s what is going to grow. If you focus on fights, you will get more fights. I don’t want it, don’t need it, it’s an energy suck and anything based in fear, that’s what it’s going to do. The only thing you’re competing against is yourself and at the end of the day it’s the outcome that is most important. And what is that outcome? The best possible success rate for our organization. If we’re doing that, families are being rebuilt, people are being healed, there are less absent fathers, etc.

Fifteen years ago it was so competitive. But leaders are needed to support this type of thinking, we’re talking about a paradigm change. Of course, leaders will only be able to truly take the lead and put their heart into it if they do it themselves.

The Donner Awards is Canada’s largest nonprofit awards program. An award valued at $5,000 is presented to a winning organization in each of seven different categories. One of these organizations is also granted the William H. Donner Award for Excellence in the Delivery of Social Services, valued at $20,000. Learn more and apply this year at www.donnerwawards.org.

Elisa Birnbaum is a freelance journalist, producer and communications consultant living in Toronto. She is also president of Elle Communications and can be reached at: info@ellecommunications.ca.

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