My Full Interview Iden Campbell McCollum
Tell us a little about yourself and your life growing up in NC?
Hello NC Peers, it my pleasure to be writing you and discussing some important work I am doing on the East Coast but in particular NC and DC. Bryan Creech asked me to interview with him a few weeks back and I was very delighted to do so. I am sure many of you have read Bryan’s blog and know how absolutely amazing it is.
Just to let you know a little about before we move on to ‘what I am doing.’ I am a native Brooklynight (NYC); my maternal side of the family has strong roots to NC having walked from Bennettsville, SC to Laurinburg and Gibson, NC to settle after slavery. I myself went to school sporadically in my childhood here in NC and ended up graduating from Enloe H.S. in Raleigh NC. I also spent time as an adult in Crossnore, NC working with youth at the Crossnore School for Children. My mother and two sisters are in Raleigh with the rest of my extended maternal family in Rockingham, Richmond, Scotland and Moore Counties. With my paternal side being natives of Barbados and the southern and central regions of Virginia. They migrated to New York City decades ago and have remained there.
Share with us why the issue of identity is so important to your story
I have many covers to my book and belong to many communities that I love and honor. My most important identity is that of being a human being that must cultivate and mentor future generations to keep this world we love moving and sustaining life.However I belong to other communities that most people identify with more than being a human being and we must change this in order to survive and thrive. Some of those communities include the transgender community, the black community and the psychiatric survivor community. As a man that identifies under the umbrella of transgender, I am working to bring those in the trans community who identify as having had emotional breaks and addictions issues into the recovery community. Bring much needed diversity to our survivor community.
What gave you the impetus to pursue peer work in the communities you serve?
At Alternatives 2013 I met over 5 trans men who came up to me to personally identify and introduce themselves to me, this after I was awarded the LGBT Leadership award. Austin was my 4th Alternatives and I never before met or heard of a trans man being in the crowd. It was an amazing and exhilarating feeling to see my brothers feeling comfortable enough to come up to me and say hey I’m here! Alternatives 2013 was the most welcoming Alternatives in my experience yet; I will be working with others to ensure that from this year forward they remain welcoming for the LGBT community as a whole. Another community, the cover people see before they see anything else is the color of my skin. I prefer the term black over African American but to cover the spectrum of people with skin that closely resemble mine I will use the term people of color. This embodies as my mentor Lauren Spiro likes to say “The Global Majority.” At Alternatives 2013 there were people of color giving keynotes and winning advocacy awards, what an amazing sight to see. After years of hearing horror stories from peers that have attended Alternatives for dozens of years and my attendance for a few years I was resigned that the powers that be did not see us much less ever recognize us. But they did in 2013 and I feel the rejuvenation of Alternatives with new thought leaders coming in to participate in the planning of future Alternatives.
Bringing diversity and removing the bias we hold within can only empower our movement to further heights. Building a movement that encompasses all of the many cultures and ethnicities we create change and truly embodying Gandhi’s words “Be The Change You Want To See.” Our movement is being attacked form all sides we need all of our strength to battle and to keep out those who look different, talk different and are not as educated only means sure defeat for our movement.
Share with me more about the peer work you are doing nationally and here in NC.
To do my part in this ever expanding world I currently split my time between NC and DC building up and out the non-profit I founded in 2007. The non-profit name is the Ida Mae Campbell Wellness & Resource Center DB/a The Campbell Center. The non-profit sat dormant from June 2008 until July 2013 when we were awarded the State Networking grant from SAMSHA in DC. We have now been up and running for almost an entire year and we are excited and grateful for such an opportunity to be leaders and innovators. Before taking on the SAMSHA grant I ran the Ida Mae Campbell Foundation in DC with a 5-year contract from the Department of Mental Health. The contract was to operate the only peer run wellness center in the city. We ended this contract in 2013 with the District after 5 years.
The center served over 3,000 unique individuals from 2008-2013. We offered WRAP, Racial Equity Workshops, Double Trouble, Facilitator Workshops, employment support groups and hosted the first ever trauma conference in DC completely peer run and facilitated in 2013. The center was an astounding success in program and peer support delivery in the District. Wanting to move in a new business direction I decided to focus on building the non-profit and developing intellectual opportunities for our peers under the non-profit auspices.)
We were awarded the State Networking Consumer Grant in 2013 and quickly set about building several coalitions that aims to make real change by being action oriented and using our skills and community to build each other up. We have partners nationally, regionally and locally. We began building on those connections immediately. In October we hosted Emotional eCPR to train a regional coalition of trainers, in December we partnered with The National Coalition on Mental Health Recovery and Howard University to hold a conversation on mental health and addictions. We brought together community members to build a bridge by having face-to-face conversations about real life issues and events.
We had police officers tell stories about how they have been touched personally by mental health crisis in their families and how this has helped them be more caring in their interactions with those in mental health crisis. We need more conversations with those in first responder roles so they can hear first-hand how their interactions with us either empower us to seek assistance from them again, traumatize us and in some cases we end up dead. Real stories, real people, real conversations create change. In January we held a citywide Service 2 Justice conference in partnership with over 20 other community-based agencies. With a broad range of topics that included advocacy, transgender services, integrating peer workers into organizations, fundraising and building boards and committees.
We have also created a partnership with dozens of community-based organizations and social justice advocates bringing racial equality to the city. We will be holding 2 2-½ day workshops on undoing racism in May and June of 2014.
For the month of May we held our 6th annual May is Mental Health Month Event in conjunction with Day of Dignity. We held simultaneous events in NC at the Chapel Hill Library and in DC at Saint Elizabeth Hospital on May 2nd and our Mental Health Summit on the 13th. In July we will be kicking off our first big event in NC for National Minority Mental Health Month in Chapel Hill and in September a month long celebration during National Recovery Month.
Explain the innovative practices are you bringing to peer providers and organizations.
We are also working on a national level to bring other thought leaders together to discover ways to create new business models for our peer providers/peer organizations. I recently joined BHbusiness Mastering Essential Business Operations as a convener. The plan was to recruit 15-20 peer organizations to participate in a peer provider learning community.
I decided to create an all peer or at least a 95 percent peer learner community after attending the ACHMA Behavioral Health College Summit in Santa Fe, New Mexico in March 2014. What I came back with last month was a sense of empowerment, information and a renewed commitment to my community to create a sustainable organization with meaningful programs, innovation, and plenty of ideas that may not necessarily be easy to implement. I decided to start with the learner community. By creating a community with others that have not only similar business experiences but also come with enough differences that we can learn from each other’s successes and failures was an important component to ensure future success.)
The learning community will allow us to work with a business coach, who will walk us through designing successful business models, learn to analyze the healthcare market and improve our current business processes. We will primarily work through a virtual learning community utilizing webinars and conference calling. We will also work independently utilizing research, reading assignments and on-line discussions. Most importantly, we will learn how to sustain the communities we have fought hard to create over the last two decades.
(My recovery power comes from drawing clear boundaries between home, social and work life. I work Tuesday-Friday each day 8-12 hours. Saturday-Monday I have fun, for me that can be napping in my hammock, watching Netflix, camping or going to the beach and being a foodie. I let people in personal and business life know what days I am available. It’s important to have me time and have fun while doing it and when it’s work time have fun while working hard. 80% of my time is spent coming up with new ideas and programs, the other 20% is spent cultivating networks, writing letter, making calls and business meetings selling those ideas. When it comes to getting work done I follow the principles of two very special fellows, Franklin Covey and Ben Franklin if all else fails I follow this simple pattern: Act. Learn. Build. Repeat. And get yourself a chalkboard. Here is a great article to help get you started
How do you define success?
With all that I am involved in one must wonder how do you know your being successful? Does it involve financial gain, awards or other accolades? For me success is seeing others that I have mentored start to develop their own thoughts and leadership styles. It means I wake up another day feeling refreshed and rejuvenated to start a new project or continue to develop one already in the oven, one more day of seeing the sky blue and stars at midnight. One of the most important things to remember whether a freshman or a senior in the field of peer work is to always honor yourself first and foremost to honor yourself is to be able to give selflessly to those we support. Take care of self, find what you enjoy and master it, and then build your brand. People don’t follow leaders they follow promise and hope, be that to your community.