Message from the Chief Executive

Dear Friends and Family:

As the reach of the Copeland Center expands around the world, it is important to me as the Chief Executive Officer that I stay in touch with our community.  With all the uncertainty around us, be it in the world or in our own backyards, I wanted to let you know we are here. The Copeland Center community is healthy and growing thanks to your support and commitment.

As you all know, it is a core set of values and ethical practices developed over a decade from a grassroots movement of peers in wellness recovery that serves as our foundation and guiding light. Copeland Center trainings have expanded to empower peers in supporting themselves and other peers in groups as varied as youth, veterans, people with developmental distinctions, and countless others.  Since our founding in 2004 the Copeland Center community has deepened the understanding and application of core wellness-based values and practices to promote personal and community wellness through certifying an increasing number of talented and committed Copeland Center co-facilitators.  Our community of co-facilitators and members cut across cultural, multidisciplinary, institutional, and geographic barriers creating systems transformation from the inside out and the outside-in. 

The educational work of the Copeland Center continues to grow. Our core values spread the message of peer support and individual empowerment through training on crisis support, healing from trauma, community inclusion peer facilitation, story-telling, and the new Wellness Engagement course (WE®) developed with the leadership of Jane Winterling.  Through in-person and online training people everywhere learn to use their own power and the power of peer support in more areas of our community.

In 2015 we were thrilled to add the Doors to Wellbeing Program, one of SAMHSA’s National Technical Assistance Centers. Over the past several years Doors to Wellbeing has already brought training to over 30,000 people at no cost to them.  

This is what we all built – the people at the Copeland Center, co-facilitators, members, and donors. We are the people who live lives based on personal empowerment, mutual support, and ongoing education. The Copeland Center is a grassroots non-profit whose existence depends upon training, technical assistance, and the support of donors and members.  The Copeland Center takes great pride in never taking money from companies that might have an agenda that does not support our message, our values, and our ethics.

We advocate and support efforts to increase the accessibility and adaptability of books and tools based on wellness, recovery, community inclusion, and peer support worldwide. Our experienced certified co-facilitators continue to be vigilant and persistent advocates of the core values and practices that led to evidence-based peer practices.  Moving forward as a peer-led grassroots non-profit we will further grow services and training throughout the world based on these firmly held values.

We remain grateful and loyal to all members of our community.  Let us know what you think, what you want, and what you need to spread the message of empowerment, peer support, and hope.  We thank you for your enthusiastic participation. We know, that with your support - be it personal, educational, political, or financial - the Copeland Center will continue as a world leader in peer-run, peer-taught, and peer-directed organizations.

Speaking on behalf of the staff and board of directors of the Copeland Center and Doors to Wellbeing, thank you, and stay tuned.  We are just getting started.

Matthew Federici, M.S., C.P.R.P.
Chief Executive Officer