Practical Needs First at a Peer-Run Recovery Hub
A Drop-In Center That Also Reaches Six Jails and One Prison
NEA Divine Intervention Inc. runs a peer-led recovery community organization and low-barrier drop-in center in northeast Arkansas that meets immediate practical needs, food, clothing, identification, transportation, and connection to treatment, so that people leaving jail, prison, treatment, or crisis can stabilize and enter recovery.
The Challenge They Were Addressing
Before this project existed, northeast Arkansas had no accessible recovery resource hub. Someone leaving incarceration, housing, treatment, or a crisis frequently needed food, identification, transportation, and a safe place to land before they could even think about treatment or recovery.
The founder saw the problem firsthand. She is a person in long-term recovery who came from a small rural town and found few resources when she needed them most. After moving to Arkansas, she saw the same lack in the local recovery community: people cycling through jails and courts without ever being told what help was available. That personal history shaped the model. The point was to give back what she had received and to build the resource hub she had needed herself.
The area also faced a shortage of stable housing and low-barrier entry points for people with substance use and mental health needs. When another local organization closed in 2022, more than 50 individuals were displaced, widening the gap in local support. The project was built to fill that gap: a place where anyone could walk through the door without judgment and be connected to food, identification, transportation, and treatment referrals.
What They Built
NEA Divine Intervention started in 2021 with a small women's sober living house, then opened a recovery community organization and drop-in center in January 2022 with a $250,000 ARORP opioid settlement award. The award let the organization lease a building, advertise, reach the community, and build the partnerships that make the model work. The drop-in center became a place where anyone could come in off the street, get coffee and a snack, and ask for help without feeling judged.
When someone walks in, they are greeted and signed in for reporting, and a peer asks what they need. Sometimes the person already knows a peer from jail or prison outreach and asks for them by name. From there, peers connect people with what they need that day: food and perishables, hygiene products, clothing from the clothing closet, help with getting a driver's license or birth certificate, a connection to an insurance provider, transportation, or a referral to detox, treatment, or sober living. The organization does not pay for clinical treatment directly. It provides the practical support that helps a person become stable enough to enter treatment, and it refers to partner services rather than paying for every service itself.
The center also offers computer and art classes, all-recovery meetings, naloxone training, and space to be. People who are new to the community are sometimes invited to assist at the front desk, giving them a role, responsibility, and a place in the community. Staff hug people and treat everyone who walks in as a human being first.
The organization began with just the founder and one other peer, and now has nine staff members. Peers travel to surrounding rural counties, including Greene, Lawrence, and Randolph, as well as to six jails and one prison, offering peer support, transportation, naloxone training, and connections to resources. Housing has grown from the first small women's house to men's and women's housing, plus aftercare. The organization is developing a larger property, a former school on 15 acres, where the first building holds 52 women; plans in progress include space for women and children, a gym, a cafeteria, a shop, an apartment, and possible tiny homes on the back of the property.
Key Program Components
Who You Need at the Table
What made a willing partner essential vs. optional?
The organization runs on its partnerships. It is a resource hub, not a treatment provider, so it does not directly pay for most services. Instead, it refers people to partner programs. Without the partnerships, the peers would have nowhere to connect people, and the model would not stand. The required partners are those that provide funding, housing, clinical treatment, and settings where peers conduct outreach.
Helpful partners widen the reach without being essential to daily operations. Local businesses, churches, colleges, and government offices add goods, space, credibility, and technical help such as website and data support. The founder built these relationships by showing up consistently, offering services free at first, and returning to the same rooms until she earned a seat at the table.
Budget Breakdown
What is the minimum viable budget to replicate this?
Spend every dollar with a plan. Before spending any funding, establish the organization's identity, decide whether it will be a nonprofit or a for-profit entity, and map the resources that already exist within the community.
Rather than paying for services or resources that community partners may be willing to provide, build relationships with churches, city and county leaders, land banks, realtors, treatment providers, recovery organizations, colleges, employers, and other community stakeholders. Draw on those partnerships first and preserve limited funding for critical needs and service gaps that cannot be addressed elsewhere.
Partnership development is the one area not to shortcut. Sustainable recovery requires housing, employment, treatment, transportation, education, and healthcare, and no single organization can provide all of that on its own.
What Worked and Why
Specific decisions or design features that drove success
The founder's own recovery and credibility opened doors that a stranger could not. Because she had lived the problem, people trusted that she understood what they were going through and that she came from the right place. She led with that story, and it built the credibility the organization now runs on.
Relationship-building came before funding. The founder went to conferences and local meetings before she had any money, introduced herself to the mayor, the sheriff's department, the police, and counseling programs, and kept showing up even after rejection. She planted the idea long before it grew, so that when funding arrived, the relationships were already in place.
Offering services free at first removed a barrier that stops many new organizations. Rather than trying to charge from day one, the founder offered services for free and let the results speak, which built goodwill and a reputation that turned early skeptics into partners.
Using partners instead of paying for every service directly stretched a small budget a long way. In the first funded year, the organization referred 622 people into detox, treatment, and sober living on a $250,000 award, not by paying for treatment itself, but by getting people stable, transported, and connected so they could reach the services that partners had already provided.
A broad, non-judgmental pathway approach met people where they were. The organization lets each person choose the path that fits them, faith-based or not, 30-day or otherwise, and refers accordingly. Paired with strong data collection, that flexibility let the organization show funders exactly who it served and what people needed.
Early outcomes and data
622 people referred to detox, treatment, and sober living in the first ARORP-funded year.
Approximately 495 people were supported in June 2026.
Growth from two staff (the founder and one peer) to nine staff.
Outreach expanded from Craighead County to surrounding rural counties and into six jails and one prison.
Housing grew from one small women's house to men's and women's housing plus aftercare, with a 15-acre campus in development.
Detailed data collected on demographics, needs, services, and referrals, with colleges assisting with data and grant reporting.
Lessons Learned
Ask questions early and fully understand funding requirements. Talk to grant administrators often and ask what settlement dollars can pay for. The founder wishes she had asked more, sooner. About $57,000 of the ARORP award was returned because it was not spent within the two-year window, a lesson she now shares openly.
Tap free community resources sooner. Colleges, businesses, and programs offer website help, data, and grant-reporting support, and other free resources that most people never learn about. She wishes she had used them earlier.
Lead with lived experience and show up before the money. Personal credibility and consistent presence at conferences and local meetings built the trust the organization runs on, long before any funding arrived.
Don't reinvent the wheel. Map what already exists, partner rather than duplicate, and offer what you can add. Jumping on board with existing efforts is faster and more effective than building everything from scratch.
Collect strong data from the start. Detailed records on demographics, needs, services, and referrals proved the need to funders and shaped the case for growth.
Take care of yourself so you can keep serving. Pouring into other people all day requires an outlet outside of work. Protecting personal recovery and well-being makes the work sustainable.