HAVE YOU WALKED IN These SHOES?
Approximately 3 out of every 100 people will experience a SMI (serious mental illness or psychosis-related illness) episode at some point in their lives, and about 100,000 young people experience psychosis each year. Each of these individuals has
FAMILY and CAREGIVERS
FRIENDS
COMMUNITY
who love them and who spend countless hours, weeks, months and sometimes years, desperately seeking help for them. They literally walk hundreds of miles seeking services, dignity and justice for their SMI loved ones.
If you have walked in these shoes, the SMI Organizing Project is for you.
THE SMI ORGANIZING PROJECT IS A NATIONAL COMMUNITY ORGANIZING EFFORT of CAREGIVERS, FAMILIES, FRIENDS and INDIVIDUALS WITH Serious mental illness (SMI). we know that despair and isolation can be transformed into a powerful force for change…if we organize.
Using community organizing fundamentals, we build on peoples’ inherent abilities to develop a group collective capacity to IDENTIFY A PROBLEM, UNDERSTAND WHERE POWER LIES and COLLECTIVELY CRAFT THE SOLUTION in order to bring about change. Because the SMI Organizing Project acknowledges that we are not the first to fight for change nor will we be the last, we center the “each one teach one” philosophy in our training and skills building approach.
It is in our hands.
Making change begins with RELATIONSHIPS and SHARED STORIES.
Community organizing enables many people to contribute in many ways, in other words: many hands gets the job done.
The SMI Organizing Project looks to previous struggles and reflections from past efforts to learn, adopt or adapt strategies for change.
Lastly, we know that SMI and psychosis-related disorders do not discriminate. Individuals with SMI come from different walks of life, experiences, nationalities, ethnicities and realities. Their stories and lives are the light that shows how change can happen.
Through tried and true community organizing fundamentals and leadership development, the SMI Organizing Project builds up the abilities, analysis and approach of groups to affect change and build community.