Dear Friends,

Is that the sun?! What a joyous occasion to see light slowly returning, so let’s dance like these students at Fred Ipalook Elementary School in Utqiaġvik. If you made it through Dry January, why stop now? Keep it rolling into February Free of Alcohol. In fact, Recover Alaska is celebrating a sober lifestyle all year on our socials. 

By now you should have received our first ever quarterly measures report! These measures were designed by Stellar Group and the Evaluation and Learning workgroup with the support of all workgroups. They’ll also be housed on the website in the next month or so on the “What We’re Doing” page. We also consented to an updated Vision of Community Wellness at our January Integration Session. Please review this updated version. You are welcome to add your comments directly to the doc or you can send your feedback to myself or Marlene. A huge thank you to Til Beetus for leading that process, and to Jennifer Madison, Eliza Davidson-Kitka, Aaron Osterback, and Travis Hedwig for your support of the process.

If you haven’t already, please register for the Alaska Wellness and Prevention Symposium, happening February 28 to March 2. We have travel scholarships available for folks traveling into Anchorage for the event. A full agenda will be added to the Symposium website (where you can also register) in a week or so. We hope you can join us!
As always, please reach out to us with any questions. We hold monthly newsletter meetings at 11 AM on the Wednesday one week before month's end. Contact Jess Braunlich at jbraunlich@spiritofyouth.org if you would like more information about this meeting/to be added to the calendar invite for the meeting.

Thank you, each of you, for your work to heal our families, communities, and systems. You are seen and you are needed! Feel free to send us your news and updates for next month's newsletter via the submission link below.

Be well,
Jess 
Updates on The Alliance's Activities

Stellar Group: The report on The Alliance's activities for SFY2023's second quarter was recently published. For a reflection on our activities, insights into our team's demographics, and other highlights, you can review the report here.

Updates from Leading Health Organizations

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): The CDC recently released a series of updated info sheets detailing each state's current data trends related to alcohol use. Alaska's sheet may be seen here.

Anchorage Youth Development Coalition: Seeking Program Manager! Center for Safe Alaskans (Safe Alaskans) promotes wellbeing, the prevention of injuries and improved safety of Alaskans. The core values guiding our work are to be innovative, collaborative, inclusive and respectful, data-driven, and strengths-based. The public health model is the foundation of our work.

The Anchorage Youth Development Coalition (AYDC) is housed at Safe Alaskans and supports youth-serving organizations through advocacy, resources, networking, and training, so all Anchorage youth thrive. We are a broad and inclusive coalition of over 60 youth-serving organizations, businesses, and individuals working to create shared community practices around professional youth work. The Program Manager will support planning, implementation, and evaluation of program activities for AYDC. More information about Safe Alaskans, AYDC, and how to apply is available online. For inquiries, reach out to Emmanuel Portillo, AYDC Director at eportillo@safealaskans.org.


Updates from the Alliance Workgroups

Regional Co-Chairs: The regional co-chairs have been meeting monthly, as scheduled. We recently welcomed Johon Atkinson, from Metlakatla, to our group and he jumped in head first to do a social media training during the Integration Session held on January 20. We have been discussing a regional co-chair “builder” role that will serve as a liaison and mentor for both current and incoming co-chairs. Regional co-chairs will also support the Alaska Wellness & Prevention Symposium as MCs.

Evaluation & Learning Workgroup: In January, the Evaluation & Learning Workgroup finalized the annual evaluation questions and methods, and prepared for upcoming peer interview sessions that will be held in March. During their meeting, the group also had a great discussion about the weaver role, tasks, responsibilities, time commitments, the importance of the position, and other job considerations.

Social Norms Campaign (Communications Workgroup): The group has been working on outreach and testing for the Underage Drinking Prevention Campaign. The group is looking for people to participate in feedback opportunities for the productions. Our timeline was recently extended from March 2023 to the end of this fiscal year (and beyond to 2024, if needed.) This hasn’t been determined yet.

The Strategy & Design Workgroup: The Strategy & Design Workgroup is developing an aim statement for the merged group and is continuing to think through methods for managing the work that is part of our workgroup’s purview, including member roles and transition planning.
We will always do our best to publish upcoming events in a timely, regular manner for our newsletter subscribers. We also keep an event calendar through the Recover Alaska website that allows our partners a secondary means of sharing their event news with our community. We welcome your submissions!
Alliance Community Stories

Join us for conversation and story sharing about your experience as a member of the Alliance, as part of the Alliance's annual evaluation. During this session, members will be paired up and have guided conversations using a list of questions developed by the Evaluation & Learning Workgroup. The interviews will be recorded and later analyzed by the evaluation team for the Alliance annual evaluation report. Participating members will received a $50 gift card as a thank you for their time and contribution.

There will be three sessions. Please select one time that best fits your schedule - you do not need to attend all three.

  • Fri (3/10): 9:30-11am
  • Mon (3/13): 2-3:30pm
  • Tues (3/14): 11:30-1pm

Calendar invites will be sent out shortly to all members so be on the lookout!
Pictured left to right: Blaze Bell, Jess Limbird,
Tiffany Hall, and Sara Platt.
About The Alliance

The Alliance is a collaborative effort of multiple and diverse partners across Alaska who recognize the impacts of alcohol misuse on individuals and communities. We are personally and professionally committed to working together to address this complex problem in our state.

Our primary goal is to connect and engage communities as partners — increasing protective factors, reducing risk factors, and changing social norms — to prevent underage alcohol use and eliminate adult misuse in Alaska.

Alliance Materials


Get Involved

Between starting new work and sustaining our progress, there are many opportunities to participate in The Alliance! All current workgroups are open to any member who would like to join. You can always read more about our workgroups and their purpose on the Get Involved page of our website. Our network practices an emergent strategy, and we update information based on our network's needs.

  • The Communications Workgroup will be supporting the social norms campaign and The Alliance's various other internal and external communications needs.
  • The Data and Learning Workgroup will be supporting data equity conversations and practices.
  • The Evaluation and Learning Workgroup is building out quarterly measures for the network to support grant reporting but also to increase real-time evaluation across the network so we can track and respond to improvement needs more frequently.
  • The Organizational Design and Strategy Workgroups will be merging for the first quarter of the fiscal year to determine if a combined group makes sense.
  • The Symposium Planning Workgroup will finalize an agenda and begin working with event planners.

You are welcome to reach out with questions about those workgroups or to ask to join any of them.