Paul Bass Photo
Sylvia Cooper and Omira Madera at WNHH FM.
Church doors will open Wednesday afternoon to welcome addicts who want to turn around their lives — in the Dixwell and, now, in the Hill.
The doors will open at Varick Memorial AME Zion and Casa de Oración y Adoración to launch a new 12-week session of a faith-based recovery effort called Imani Breakthrough Faith-based Opioid Recovery Program.
Two Yale School of Medicine psychiatrists, Chryell Bellamy and Ayana Jordan, started the program in 2018 conjunction with Varick, the historic African-American congregation on Dixwell Avenue. The idea was to involve churches in recovery — and to reach people where they are to link them with intensive help to stop abusing opiates like heroin or alcohol.
The program features 12 weekly group sessions offering support and education. It also features ongoing individual “wellness coaching” — assistance in finding treatment and jobs and housing and food, as well as any other help for challenges related to addiction and poverty. Participants are invited to attend Bible study or church services, but that’s not a requirement.
Varick has so far helped 175 people, 60 percent of whom remain in recovery and 30 percent of whom have relapsed but remain connected, according to Sylvia Cooper, a congregational leader who also serves as the church’s Imani coordinator.
“People are broken,” Cooper said of community members struggling with addiction. “When you’re broken, you go to the church.”
Imani earned national recognition and spread to three other predominantly African-American congregations in Connecticut.
Now it’s reaching out specifically to the Latino community. A veteran social worker named Omira Madera is piloting that effort, through her congregation, Casa de Oración y Adoración at 555 Columbus Ave.
Madera first got involved in Imani as an intern while earning her master’s in social work at Southern Connecticut State University, where she enrolled after 18 years as a social worker with the state Department of Children and Families. She saw how the program succeeded in reaching people. She also saw how the Latino community required special outreach. Imani needed to reach people struggling with substance abuse who don’t speak English, she said. It also needed to reach undocumented immigrants — who often feel safest in their church.
Madera also observed that in the Latino community a higher percentage of addicts abuse alcohol as opposed to opiates.
Anyone interested in enrolling in the Spanish-language Imani program at Casa should show up at the church Wednesday at 5:30 p.m., when a new session begins. (For more information call 475 – 238-2769.) The Varick Imani program is also beginning a new 12-week cohort, with room for 47 participants. Doors open there (242 Dixwell Ave.) Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. (For more information call 203 – 624-6245.)
Madera and Cooper discussed the program during an appearance Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program. Click below to watch the full interview.