Dear SMART Stakeholders,

I'd like to begin by thanking you again for an amazing 2024! We've made significant progress in laying the foundation for a sustainable SMART Recovery for the next 30 years after celebrating the first 30 at our conference earlier this year. Our focus now is to cultivate communities of empowerment across the country to continue to bring our self-empowering approach to all. To that end, our Director of Marketing & Communications, Luke Frazier, has curated five examples of thriving SMART communities of empowerment across the country to share with us between now and the end of the year. 

I love that we're kicking things off with Charlotte-Mecklenburg. The good folks in Mecklenburg County recognize the value of evidence-informed, MAT-supportive mutual aid. They provided funding for us to expand access to SMART throughout the county with a grant - not just to get folks trained in SMART, but to build community around implementing SMART. The results have been tremendous, in no small part because of the hard work of LaNija Redmond, our Community Outreach Coordinator there.