The theme of the ongoing 2002 National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month is "Join the Voices of Recovery: A Call to Action." A nationally coordinated effort to raise awareness about the need for addiction treatment and recovery services, the annual Recovery Month campaign is coordinated through the federal Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) and involves dozens of cosponsoring organizations.

At the same time, an organization with a similar (though not identical) mission -- but perhaps a more lasting impact -- is quietly setting up shop in suburban Virginia. Faces and Voices of Recovery sees its mission as mobilizing and supporting the emerging grassroots recovery-advocacy movement. "We are at the very beginning of a new civil-rights movement for people in recovery," says Susan Rook, director of communications and outreach for Faces and Voices.

While some local organizations advocate on behalf of a particular treatment program or modality, Faces and Voices hopes to bring a diverse network of groups together to deliver a "message of hope about recovery to America," says director Rick Sampson, formerly the state substance-abuse agency director in Maryland and director of the Division of State and Community Assistance at CSAT.

Like its predecessor organization the Alliance Project, Faces and Voices is not seeking the mantle of leadership for the recovery community. "We're not the national movement, but people in the movement can call us [when they need help]," Rook said. "We are in service to those grassroots and local advocacy organizations," she adds, saying that the organization can help provide a sense of "unified purpose" to the recovery movement.

Faces and Voices sees its role as providing infrastructure to the hundreds of disparate recovery organizations across the nation, many of which have been founded only during the past few years, according to Sampson. The organization's goals also include educating the public about the need for treatment and the realities of recovery, motivating people within the recovery community to advocate on their own behalf, and boosting networking among widely scattered groups with similar missions.

"I really think the national organization provides an opportunity for us to have power in numbers," said Elizabeth Trimmer, coordinator of Rhode Island Community for Addiction Recovery Efforts (RICAREs), a local advocacy organization. "The things we want to do take more than a few voices; they take collaboration. When we tell people we're part of the New England Alliance for Addiction Recovery, it carries a lot more weight." A national organization would be even more compelling to policymakers than a regional one, Trimmer said.

Credit for the recent groundswell of recovery advocacy accrues in part to CSAT, which until recently was providing funding to help grassroots advocacy groups get off the ground. (The focus of CSAT's Recovery Community Support Program has recently shifted from advocacy to services, however.) A summit meeting of recovery advocates, convened in October 2001 in St. Paul, Minn., also provided a major boost to the movement. And Rook said that Join Together's online news services and the Demand Treatment! initiative have helped people in recovery realize that there are others like them around the country who are willing to fight for their rights.

Politically, the time also seems right for a national recovery advocacy movement to take root and flourish, adds Sampson. "The President talks about the armies of compassion," he noted. "The 20 million people in recovery are an army of compassion that has a spiritual component and a legacy of giving back to the community."

Faces and Voices will distribute to advocacy groups such existing resources as marketing brochures on recovery and data on public attitudes regarding addiction, culled from a Peter Hart survey conducted last year; future plans include a followup to the Hart survey.

"Groups are starting up all over," said Sampson. "We've got to be able to respond."

Faces and Voices can help groups like RICAREs by acting as a conduit between the public and the smaller recovery organizations in their communities, similar to the role the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill plays in the mental-health field, said Trimmer. She also would like to see additional resources developed that educate the public -- which hears a great deal about the negative aspects of alcohol and other drug use -- on "the aftermath of addiction and celebration of recovery."

Faces and Voices drew upon a a variety of resources to open its offices in Alexandria, Va., in August, including grant money from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a federal contract, donations from the Johnson Institute and individuals, and in-kind gifts from a web-hosting firm and others. The group is now in the process of raising money to keep the doors open beyond the end of the year and develop services for the recovery community.

Faces and Voices of Recovery, 901 North Washington St., Suite 601, Alexandria, VA 22314; 703-299-6760; fax 703-299-6768. www.facesandvoicesofrecovery.org.