Offering help to the Vandal community

Genesha Mortensen moved into her new office on the University of Idaho campus during the summer with a goal to lay the groundwork for a robust campus recovery system in Moscow.

Now, a week into the new school year, she is ready to meet it head on.

Vandal Recovery, an outreach program of Latah Recovery Center, moved into the bottom floor of the Center at 822 Elm St. with a goal to create a community around recovery on campus. It is open to any faculty, staff or students on campus, and offers help with drugs and alcohol, mental health and other issues.

Mortensen started as a volunteer at Latah Recovery Center about two years ago and was excited for the chance to build the campus program. She wanted to get involved in her community after having been a stay-at-home mom for the past 20 years. She started as the Vandal Recovery program assistant in March of this year.

As the full-time staffer at the Center for Vandal Recovery, Mortensen manages volunteers, tabling events, peer support and recovery coaching. As part of the Latah Recovery Center, Mortensen said they participate in the harm reduction program for the wider campus community. The Center on the University of Idaho campus also has a satellite of the Moscow Food Co-op and some of the campus ministers.

“We’re all working together to build that sense of a larger community,” Mortensen said.

The goal is to build a program with a variety of programs for everyone to be able to access. With the new school year, Mortensen is looking for volunteers.

The Latah Recovery Center has been working on bringing a program to campus for the last few years, said Director Darrell Kiem. The program was first pitched right before the pandemic and, after that, it was staffed by volunteers before Kiem said they were invited to apply for funding through the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. The grant would fund a full-time employee to get the program off the ground.

Starting a campus recovery program means asking for volunteers, working with campus administration and planning events to get the program in front of students. Mortensen said she spent a lot of her time at first researching other campus recovery programs to see what might work for Moscow.

She said Texas Tech, which has had a program on campus since 1986, was a major resource. Texas Tech had published for free on the internet a guide for other schools to be able to start their own program.

“We try to support in any way that we can,” Mortensen said.

Nelson can be reached at knelson@dnews.com.