A peer-led recovery community

Corrected transcript from the Recovery Cymru film.

Keeley: Hello, my name is Keeley, and I work for Recovery Cymru.

Here at Recovery Cymru, we promote hope. Through our peer-led workforce, we’re able to inspire others through our knowledge and understanding as a result of our own recovery journeys.

We are a safe and non-judgemental space for people to come, speak and feel heard. We truly believe that everybody has the potential to recover.

We believe at Recovery Cymru in hope, new beginnings and building bridges.

Here at Recovery Cymru, we empower our members to be the best they can be. We don’t just listen to our members; we actually hear what they have to say, what they want for themselves and what they want their lives to look like. We then help them take steps to achieve this.

Callum Mason: What’s going on, people? My name is Callum Mason, here at Recovery Cymru.

One of the things we do is empower people by guiding them through their recovery instead of doing the work for them. This helps them identify the life they want to lead, giving them hope, meaning and optimism.

At Recovery Cymru, we promote meaning and identity by encouraging members to engage in groups, which provide routine and structure. We also provide volunteer training and community volunteering opportunities, as well as encouraging members to pursue new passions, hobbies and skills for the future.

Here at Recovery Cymru, we empower people. By empowering people, we do not do for; we do with. We follow people on their recovery journey and support them without doing it for them, showing them that life can be bigger and better.

At Recovery Cymru, we encourage people to reframe their identity positively. People are so much more than their substance use and their pasts. We encourage people to be proud of who they are, what they have overcome and what they continue to achieve.

At Recovery Cymru, connection is vital for recovery. Through peer support, we encourage hope through lived and shared experience. Our identity as a LERO—a Lived Experience Recovery Organisation—gives meaning to the recovery process, where self-empowerment and commitment are key to positive recovery.

[Music]

Recovery Cymru helped me find my identity again after my mental health took a battering from my previous employment. It gave me hope that life can be good again by helping and empowering me to feel good about myself.

This place gives meaning to so many people in so many ways. It does this through connectivity: via phone, via Zoom, face-to-face, through the centres and through the people. It’s an amazing place to work, to work with people and to be there for people.

For me, it’s all about connection. At first, sure, it’s a peer-based connection that’s unique and valuable, but that is just the foundation.

Recovery is a stepping stone towards taking one’s place in a bigger, wider world. It’s about taking our place wherever we want and connecting in places that once felt inaccessible, scary or beyond our dreams—or indeed our imaginations.

At Recovery Cymru, I found help to expand the connections of life in recovery, be it with our neighbours, our peers, our cities or the wider world.

It is about the world, what it can offer us and what we can offer the world.