MARCO's Signature Events

MARCO Signature Events

Learn. Advocate. Connect.

MARCO’s signature events bring together recovery leaders, advocates, and community members from across Minnesota to strengthen the recovery movement through training, public action, and community connection.

Recovery Advocacy Workshop Recovery Day on the Hill Community Recovery Summit

From advocacy skill-building to statewide community gatherings, these signature events create opportunities to learn from one another, build relationships, and support systems change that strengthens recovery across Minnesota.

Recovery Advocacy Workshop Training + Advocacy

Recovery Advocacy Workshop

Join MARCO for a daylong workshop focused on current recovery policy issues, advocacy skill-building, and connecting with advocates from diverse recovery communities. This welcoming, nonpartisan event helps people turn lived experience into action.

  • Learn about recovery-related legislative topics and policy issues
  • Build confidence connecting with state policymakers
  • Explore how lived experience can make a difference
  • Prepare for Recovery Day on the Hill
Recovery Day on the Hill Civic Engagement

Recovery Day on the Hill

Recovery Day on the Hill brings the recovery community together at the State Capitol to raise visibility, meet with legislators, and show Minnesota that recovery is possible. It is a powerful opportunity to stand with advocates from across the state and support policies that expand recovery.

  • Rally with the recovery community at the Capitol
  • Speak directly with your legislators
  • Support recovery-centered policy and public awareness
  • Participate in a free, nonpartisan advocacy event
Community Recovery Summit Conference + Community

Community Recovery Summit

The Community Recovery Summit is a two-day gathering of systems-changing work across diverse recovery communities. With sessions, workshops, exhibitors, networking, and social connection, the summit creates space for grassroots leaders, organizations, and community members to learn and move the work forward together.

  • Two full days of sessions, workshops, and shared learning
  • CEUs for Certified Peer Recovery Specialists
  • Exhibitors, resources, and statewide networking
  • Designed for recovery leaders, organizations, and community members

Explore MARCO’s Signature Events

Whether you are building advocacy skills, showing up at the Capitol, or connecting with recovery leaders from across the state, these events offer meaningful ways to engage and grow the recovery movement.

Lighthouse Beginnings

LHB came to life when we became a 501(c)(3) in 2020. We built a board of directors of people in recovery. LHB launched for the purpose of assisting and empowering individuals to remove the roadblocks experienced while in the recovery process.

LHB was developed and continues to be managed by individuals with lived experience, education, diverse backgrounds, and different pathways of recovery. We have locations in Brainerd and in Minneapolis, trying to expand our reach to those who face recovery daily, know people in recovery, face homelessness, or have been wrongly incarcerated.

Service Delivery Options

On-site at a physical location
In-person in the community through outreach
In-person in the community through pop-up sites at other provider locations

Services Offered

  • Certified Peer Recovery Specialists (1:1 support)
  • On-demand recovery navigation (call/email)
  • All recovery meetings
  • Volunteer/internship opportunities
  • Recovery skills-building classes
  • Social recovery events

Our Approach

Peer support encompasses a range of activities and interactions between people who share similar experiences of being diagnosed with mental health conditions, substance use disorders, or both. This mutuality is often called “peerness” — a connection between a peer support worker and a person in or seeking recovery that promotes connection and inspires hope.

Peer support offers a level of acceptance, understanding, and validation not found in many other professional relationships. By sharing their own lived experience and practical guidance, peer support workers help people develop goals, create strategies for self-empowerment, and take steps toward building fulfilling, self-determined lives through individualized wellness plans.

Outreach & Resources

Onsite supplies
Street outreach (support, education, supplies)
Referrals to Medication Assisted Recovery
Overdose prevention training

Harm Reduction Supplies

Naloxone/Narcan
Fentanyl test strips
Xylazine test strips

Additional Support

Recovery residences / sober housing
Housing stabilization support services
Mental health peer support services
Food shelf / food assistance
Clothing shelf / clothing assistance

Programs & Events

  • Public trainings

We've offered anger management classes, as well as an all-recovery meeting every Tuesday at 1 PM.