How Collaboration and Coalition Building Can Help College Students

Dedicated to supporting marginalized students in the recovery community, Students Recover aims to create a virtual platform to support students at minority-serving institutions that do not offer collegiate recovery programs. With a mission to center services around those who traditionally have not been represented in the recovery space, Students Recover focuses on harm reduction and multiple pathways that do not require abstinence. It strives to be an online platform to support students in a safe and inclusive environment to heal and grow while increasing a sense of belonging and community.

Since Students Recover’s work is grounded in equity and justice, it is critical to value the lived experiences of the community and not replicate the harms of systemic oppression within the organization. Additionally, because Students Recover is dedicated to providing support to those college students who come from communities most impacted by the war on drugs and are least likely to have access to recovery support services on their campus, centering the needs of those who have been most systematically marginalized is critical to the mission. Following these overarching values, Students Recover presented in a LabStorm that discussed trust-based funding, coalition building, and tiered volunteer structure.

• Expanding Through Trust Based Funders.
• Coalition Building and University Partnerships.
• Tiered Volunteer Structure & Technology for Social Impact. 

At the end of the LabStorm discussion, Kristine highlighted the key takeaways that would be beneficial for their work in Students Recover. Kristine thought of forming advisory groups where the first people being hired would be students in recovery. This could be further extended to a professional advisory group to help in fundraising or other specific topics. Focusing on coalition and collaboration, Kristine would like to venture out to places where they didn’t think of collaborating before. Furthermore, they highlighted the potential utilization of the resources that already exist, particularly within higher education or higher education adjacent.