Mobilizing Communities

The discussion of the opportunities for collective action in Chapter 9 identified the key role community empowerment and social connectedness can play in engaging the strength of neighborhoods and communities. The quotation above by a leading Samoan academic captures the way in which social connectedness and personal identity are intertwined. This chapter explores how these broader layers of social connectedness can contribute to collective actions that challenge addictive relationships. It focuses on three quite different examples of community approaches that have been used to assist and support the long process of reintegration. The first example examines the use of volunteers as a way for addiction services to link in ongoing community support for reintegration. The second example emerged within Croatian and Italian communities as a widespread and organized network aimed at providing long-term support for families undertaking reintegration. The third example describes the application of indigenous understandings of the central value of relationships to develop a variety of strategies to support changes in Māori communities in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Each example was chosen to highlight the diversity of ways that a community might incorporate social approaches in their response to addictive relationships.