The Brentwood Recovery Home trained over 70 people in peer support strategies after a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.
The $99,000 grant went towards offering a course that equipped graduates with the knowledge and skills to offer safe, compassionate and effective peer-to-peer assistance.
"With peer support, it's people with lived experience helping other people with lived experience," said Ben Moradi, grant coordinator. "We had classes set up to ensure that everyone was on the same level and they knew what was expected through peer support."
While peer support has always been a pillar of the Brentwood program, the grant allowed the organization to purchase resources from provincially and federally recognized sources.
"This is not going to change who they help, it changes how they help," said Moradi. "Brentwood has a lot people going out into the community help, they're just going to have better tools to do it and we're going to be able to help out the community in a better capacity with the more knowledge we have."
Even though the grant funding and the courses are complete, the tools and knowledge are being passed down to other individuals.
"There's 40 plus guys on program at at time, there's 40 guys that I can take those tools and try to have a positive impact with," said program attendee Johnathon Colella. "We're that resource now, we can help these guys. I find it keeps guys here too cause they feel like they're talking to somebody that's not going to judge them cause they've been through it, but also has some of that academic experience."