Remarks at Ready, Willing & Able Philadelphia graduation 2024

Good evening. I am Kevin Peter, Executive Director of Ready, Willing & Able Philadelphia.

Welcome to our first graduation ceremony since 2019!!!

I am very happy to welcome Philadelphia City Council President Kenyatta Johnson. Thank you to Old Pine Presbyterian Church and Old Pine Community Center for hosting our graduation and celebration, as they both have done in past years.

Please help me thank our board of directors, who guide and support our work throughout the year: Malik Neal, Chair; Frances Beckley, Secretary; and members Natalie Barndt and Colel Duncan. Many of our staff are with us this evening, and they each deserve a shout-out for their dedication and selfless work, day in and day out.

Tonight, we honor and celebrate men who successfully completed the Ready, Willing & Able Philadelphia program over the last five years. So much has happened since our last graduation.

The pandemic kept many people from seeking shelter and support in 2020 and 2021. At one point in the height of the pandemic, our 50-person facility had only fifteen men in transitional residence. Today we have 47, with three more coming next week.

The opioid epidemic was already claiming close to 50,000 lives in the U.S. by 2019. This skyrocketed during the pandemic to more than 80,000 deaths in 2022. In Philadelphia alone, 1,413 people died from overdoses in 2022 – the most ever.

That year, primary funding for our work moved from Philadelphia’s Office of Homeless Services to the Office of Addiction Services, and almost overnight our program changed from “transitional housing” to “recovery housing.” This means that some of tonight’s graduates came to us with a label of “homeless,” and others with a label of “addict.” Take the labels away, because we work with “men.” Living, breathing men. Men who found themselves struggling with housing insecurity, or substance use disorder, or both.

On my office wall I have a poster of Nelson Mandela when he was President of South Africa. He had returned to Robben Island and stood gazing out the window of his former prison cell. The poster includes this quote from Mandela’s autobiography: “There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.”

“The valley of the shadow of death.” Is there any better way to describe living on the street or in buildings that are not structurally safe, or seeking refuge on the subway to sleep or take shelter from severe weather, where you don’t know if you can trust the people around you, but where you know there are dangerous and deadly substances, illnesses, weather, and weapons? Many of us who lived through years of substance use disorder, whether we had homes or not, know the valley of the shadow of death. We know what it looks like. Feels like. Tastes like.

Many of the men who come to us have been in shelters, rehabs, recovery houses, and other programs before coming to our program. Substance use disorder recovery is rarely a one-and-done event. Relapse is not required, but it is common. It is, tragically, part of the disease. Indeed, “Many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again.”

When we are ready to recover, most of us quickly learn we have a lot of work to do. Uncomfortable work. Humbling work.

Ready, Willing & Able’s mantra has always been, “Work works.” The most visible part of our program is the Community Improvement Program, where our men don their uniforms and transform into The Men In Blue to clean sidewalks and public spaces in many of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods and business corridors. Getting back into a daily routine of waking up early, eating a good breakfast, showering, getting dressed in clean clothes, accomplishing tasks and assignments, and getting paid for one’s efforts – these are part of the path to re-organizing a life after chaos and unpredictability. But as we have learned, it’s not enough.

What we have learned as a recovery house is that, yes, “work works,” but only when recovery works, first. Without embracing and practicing an ongoing program of recovery, many of us with substance use disorder will sooner or later lose our sobriety, and then our jobs, our homes, our families and friends, our emotional and mental well-being, and our self-respect.

So our daily routine includes in-house recovery meetings and participation in intensive outpatient treatment. We take men to external recovery meetings in the evenings, weekends, and holidays. We stock our library with books from recovery programs and related literature.

Our greatest recovery support, our staff, share their experience, strength, and hope with men throughout the day. And night. And weekend. While not all our staff live with substance use disorder, many of us do and are here to show others the path to long-term recovery. Regardless of title or department, staff facilitate one-to-one and small-group conversations about recovery and life’s challenges. They are living examples of finding serenity and dealing with life on life’s terms. They model and teach life skills. They demonstrate grace and integrity as they deal with the most challenging situations to be found in a recovery setting.

Ready, Willing & Able Philadelphia’s primary purpose is to support men in recovery. We are here to do this with respect and dignity. We know from our own lived experience that change is not only possible – it happens every day. So as a person in long-term recovery, working with men in early recovery, I hurt when I hear people dehumanized while still struggling with this chronic disease.

I hurt when an elected official says about a proposed treatment facility in Northeast Philly: “If you’re going to do a site, I think in a secure complex like a prison complex makes sense to me.” I hurt when I hear an elected official perpetuating a harmful, outdated image of people who have this deadly disease. I hurt when a corporate executive who wants to build a high-rise treatment center in University City, claims: ?"...we’ll fix 90% of the people that are on the street in one project…Put them into our building, sort of like a car wash, they’re going to come in dirty and they’re going to come out clean.” People with substance use disorder are not dirty cars, and recovery is not an assembly line. Recovery happens in an environment of dignity and respect.

I have the privilege of accompanying some of our men to court, where they are ready to stand up and take accountability for past actions. Nervous, but ready. Time and time again, I have seen prosecutors and judges reduce and even drop charges and sentences when they see the tangible changes men are making in their lives. I get to see the light in men’s faces when they re-unite with family members who long-ago wrote them off. I get to see the bounce in their step when they get a job they assumed wouldn’t want them because of their past. You see, in recovery, our behaviors attract positive people and situations back into our lives.

What does it mean to successfully complete our program? First: living clean and sober - nothing good lasts without long-term recovery. Second: getting a full-time job that pays a living wage - work works, work pays, and paychecks are essential to stable living situations. Third: getting into a stable, long-term living situation – an affordable, safe space with predictability, where a man can continue developing this new phase of his life.

What is success in our program? You’re about to see it in the men who walk across this stage, and in the men who will speak, representing their fellow graduates. These men are successes. They are survivors. They are proof that it’s never too late. No case is hopeless. No one is a lost cause.

One step at a time, one day at a time, they are moving toward the “mountaintop of their desires.” Graduates, we applaud you!