Expanding our organization across the country.

Our organization, LifeRing Secular Recovery Society of Canada, is a registered charity in Canada. ([login to view URL]). We are a volunteer driven organization that provides peer support meetings for all those in recovery from substance use disorders. We are a secular group and provide a much needed alternative to faith based and more dogmatic approaches to recovery. We were founded in Victoria in 2008 and are asscociated with the international based organization [login to view URL] based in Oakland ([login to view URL]). We are however an autonomour organization. Since our founding we have been successfully running meetings in Victoria and Vancouver, recently starting meetings in Toronto, Moncton and Charlottetown. We are constantly getting requests to start new meetings in many places but are unable to do so because of our lack of available funds. We rely 100% on donations at meetings and from supporters but this is simply not enough to allow us to provide the service we know we can provide for the thousands of sufferers looking for an alternative approach to recovery. So our project is to produce and purshase materials that we can distribute across the country, to provide funding for new meetings to get established in cities across the country. Depending on how much funding we can secure we want to look at putting an organizer into the field to assist new meetings and to popularize our message. We have no idea on how to approach this issue. We have looked at both BC and Federal Canadian grants available and it looks extremely daunting to wade into this morass. Please respond if you want more information. George Gidora, president LifeRing Secular Recovery Society of Canada