PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — September is National Recovery Month. Darnell Hinton is on a mission all year long to help people in every stage of recovery from addiction. He runs a nonprofit called Teach One Feed One.
“Our mission is to provide the tools for sustained sobriety to individuals in recovery and ongoing support to their loved ones,” Hinton said.
Teach One Feed One started from Hinton’s own experience during his recovery.
“I was about three months clean. I was actually sitting in one of my group sessions. The clinician went around the room. He asked what everyone was going to do that weekend. I told him that I was gonna go to Kensington that weekend and feed the homeless,” Hinton said. “That process kind of continued to snowball into what we have today.”
What started out as feeding people in one way turned into feeding a whole community in other ways.
“If you give a man a fish, he can eat for a day, but if you teach a man how to fish, [he] can eat for the rest of his life. And when we say ‘eat,’ we don't mean like physically eating. We mean ‘eat’ in the sense of knowledge and just consuming things, consuming life, things all around.”
Teach One Feed One offers a number of programs, including resources for treatment, scholarships for children affected by addiction, and communities for sober living.
“It's our job to help them,” Hinton said, “and get them to the next phase of their life.”
They just started a new program designed to help men who have been sober for at least nine months transition from restrictive housing situations into more independent living. It offers housing for those who can’t afford it on their own yet but with fewer rules than in a standard recovery house.
If you need help with recovery or want to volunteer, call Teach One Feed One at 877-215-TOFO, or visit teachonefeedone.org.