Derry-based addiction recovery coaching service ARC Fitness has been reflecting on reaching its four year milestone.
ARC Fitness helps people to combat addiction and turn their lives around on a day-to-day basis.
Their services are led by people who once needed help themselves, and creates a chain reaction of recovery and help.
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ARC Fitness founder Gary Rutherford had his own personal struggle with addiction, and his journey to combat it led to the creation of this service.
Speaking to MyDerry, he said: "Four years ago ARC started off as a Facebook signposting services offering advice, support and education to individuals struggling with substance use. The page took off really quickly and I decided, why don’t I try this on a face-to-face level.
"The goal was always to use exercise and physical activity as a vehicle to help people recover from substance use disorders. My lived experience of addiction and recovery played a massive part of that, I saw the importance physical activity played in rebuilding my life.
"I began running a physical 6-week recovery programme, PureGym kindly let me use their facility as I didn’t have one, whilst working as an addiction nurse within the western trust. Eventually we secured our first location, a small studio space in the Waterside and I was ecstatic. Having our own space allowed us to run more classes and facilitate more groups.
"We had secured funding from LTF Charitable Trust and The National Lottery, this allowed us to run programmes. coronavirus>Covid came and forced all our services online, this gave us a chance to actually provide more access to classes and support via zoom. Demand for ARC’s services grew.
"People starting recognising the positive impact we were having on people in the community in 2021 we secured funding and soon after Learning Pool came onboard as a corporate sponsor and we looked at a new home for ARC Fitness.
"We moved to our new space in July 2021, redeveloped the space and turned it into what you see today. Our team has expanded to 14, with 5 full time employees all with a range of skills, mental health nursing, counselling, therapy, personal training, recovery coaching and peer support.
"We are now able to offer recovery programmes, family support programmes, community programmes, workshops, employee assistance programmes and run large scale outreach events in the city. More importantly we offer hope.
"Over the past 2 years we have directly engaged with over 4000 people. The last 4 years have been a whirlwind, there have been up and downs, wins, tears, sacrifice and laughter. We have watched a community of people come from struggles to strength and this is why ARC does what it does. We are not the sum of our problems, we are much more than that."
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