NEW JERUSALEM LAURA
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Mission Statement
The mission of New Jerusalem Now (formerly known as New Jerusalem Laura) is recovery in all its dimensions, from personal to societal. The immediate focus is recovery from mind-altering chemicals. The long-range focus is recovery for its members and associates from all obstacles to the fullness of human life - physical, spiritual, psychological, social and economic.
About This Cause
New Jerusalem Now is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. The New Jerusalem Now residential recovery program is its main program. History In 1988, Sister Margaret McKenna, PhD, a Medical Mission Sister, moved into North Central Philadelphia to live simply in one of society’s “abandoned” and poverty-stricken places. She soon learned that addiction is a cause of many of the neighborhood’s problems: poverty, theft, abuse and violence, broken families and substandard housing amidst a landscape of abandoned properties. Sister Margaret met Rev. Henry T. Wells, founder of the One Day at a Time (ODAAT) grassroots recovery program. She began educating herself about recovery and participating in the anti-drug and anti-violence activities of ODAAT. Inspired by the grassroots and self-help philosophy of ODAAT, Sister Margaret started New Jerusalem Now. New Jerusalem Now has grown to be a facility of five houses, rehabilitated from vacancy by its members. It serves an average of 70 members each year and also provides community improvement services to its neighbors. Current Programs New Jerusalem Now serves people suffering from drug and alcohol addiction (called members) through the Basic and Advanced phases of its residential recovery program. At any given time, New Jerusalem Now has the capacity to serve up to 40 members. The members are mostly African American, from cities in the Philadelphia region including Camden and Wilmington, and with an average age of 40. Both the Basic and the Advanced phases of the residential recovery program fulfill New Jerusalem Now’s mission of holistic recovery in all its dimensions, from personal – recovery from mind-altering chemicals – to societal, where the participants recover from the obstacles that lead to their drug abuse in the first place and help improve the society around them. Treatment is a continuum of holistic care. The six-month Basic phase advances from a highly structured two-month supervised and intensive therapy into a process of gradually increasing freedom and responsibility within the community. Basic phase members commit to communal living and to seeking sustained recovery through personal spiritual growth. Basic phase members do community service for their neighbors in North Central Philadelphia. The Basic phase builds toward a less structured and supervised, but still accountable, Advanced Recovery phase. The goal of the Advanced phase of the program is for the members to achieve fully responsible, relationally rich, independent living. All Advanced members live in community. Each week, they attend two external meetings (the North East Treatment Center, Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, etc.), two New Jerusalem meetings (a community meeting on Tuesdays and the Men’s Group/Women’s Group on Tuesdays), and the mandatory Thursday meeting where members share their goals and challenges in achieving those goals. Most take on full-time jobs, and others additionally pursue education and training programs. The focus of New Jerusalem’s Advanced phase is for members to establish accountability for individual advanced recovery goals and to prepare to face the demands of “life on life’s terms,” including secure housing, financial responsibility, and relational health within families. New Jerusalem’s Service Statistics and Greatest Successes New Jerusalem Now’s service statistics demonstrate one of our organization’s greatest successes. We have a relapse rate of 24% when the national relapse rate is averaging 40-60% according to data from the Journal of the American Medical Association presented by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Related to this success is that 72 or 44% of the 164 people who were members in the program between 2013 and 2017 and who stayed for more than ten days are still sober. The national average for sobriety is 15%. Our second greatest success is about the individuals, their families, and the communities in which they participate. At an event held this spring, one member (who will be referred to as Jane) celebrated the 15th anniversary of her being sober. Formerly, Jane was a hardcore heroin user whose commitment to feeding her heroin addiction resulted in her doing egregious acts to her family members. Today, these same family members celebrate her sobriety with her. The third greatest success is New Jerusalem Now’s total integration as a community-based recovery program with activities serving the people in the community in which it is located. For example, New Jerusalem Now members tend to several neighborhood garden plots, assist with weekly food redistribution administered in partnership with Philabundance, and provide afterschool snacks for our neighboring children as part of a required two hours of daily community service. Fresh vegetables from the garden are available to people in the community and are incorporated into healthy meals for the recovery program’s members. According to an article on food insecurity in the May 21, 2010 issue of The Philadelphia Inquirer, the North Philadelphia area, home to New Jerusalem Now, ”ranks among the hungriest in the United States, with 25.9% of people living there relying on food stamps.”