About Us
History of the Hardwick Area Community Coalition
After many years of noticing prescription drug abuse as well as other drug abuse happening in our community, in December of 2002, Larry Renaud, a community member and pharmacist at Brooks, called a public meeting to address these destructive issues. Over 100 people attended that first meeting, with a core group of community members volunteering to do more.
As a result, the Hardwick Area Community Coalition was created. We were fortunate to get scholarships to allow us to attend various trainings on building an effective drug prevention organization. Larry Renaud, Mary Wheeler, Karen Gates, Jim Tousant, and Johanna Rawson were the original members who volunteered their time to attend these trainings. From these trainings they brought back information to the community and worked to get community leadership support. Jim Dziobek, the Chief of Police at that time, saw the connections between crime and alcohol and drug abuse and became an active supporter, as did other community leaders.
From our beginnings as concerned community residents, we reached out to include all members of our community: law enforcement, religious community, youth, schools, the business community, civic organizations, social service agencies, state government, local government, essentially anyone concerned about the quality of life in our community and helping youth make healthy decisions.
We developed into a Coalition: a group of individuals and organizations working together in order to achieve a common goal - in our case the HACC vision of a health conscious community with a healthy self-image that improves the quality of life for our citizens and provides a prosperous arena for business.
To realize this vision, the Hardwick Area Community Coalition focuses our mission on reducing alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use by changing the norms within our communities and delaying the onset of first use of these substances by youth.
We received a grant from the State Of Vermont Department of Health during the summer of 2004, which allowed us to hire our first, part-time Coordinator. We have continued to receive support from the State as well as the Federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to further our work. We now have funding to support a staff of 4, as well as an office in Hardwick.