About Us

Our Mission

Our mission is to support people who feel stuck or at risk of becoming stuck in rediscovering direction, balance, and well-being in their lives.

The Green Recovery Space offers an inclusive, safe, and accessible place where people can work on their recovery voluntarily, based on equality and personal ownership.

In a diagnosis-free, welcoming setting, trained lived-experience professionals guide personal recovery processes through peer support, education, and structured self-help, so that everyone can rediscover balance and meaning at their own pace.

Our Vision

We believe in a society where feeling stuck is seen as a human experience not as a deficiency. A society where people are given space, support, and trust to rediscover direction and meaning in their own way and at their own pace.

We believe experiential knowledge, professional expertise, and scientific insight are equally valuable and together contribute to recovery.

We see the Green Recovery Space as a recovery workshop in Curaçao that demonstrates how person-centered, inclusive support is possible and that inspires and supports other Caribbean islands to shape this approach in their own way.

Our Core Values

Trust in the power of recovery

We believe in the power of people to recover. Everyone can take steps in recovery, no matter how great the challenges.

Accessible and open

Everyone is welcome with us, without labels or conditions.

Equality and humanity

We create space and a safe environment where people feel seen and respected. We listen without judgment and act with compassion.

Space for the process

We carefully connect with each person's recovery process and the pace at which it unfolds. People decide how they shape their recovery, with support where they need it.

Connecting

We actively seek connections and collaboration with people and organizations involved in care and support for people who have become stuck or are at risk of becoming stuck.

Our Recovery Vision

Recovery is the personal process through which people who have become stuck in their lives find direction and meaning again. It's not just about reducing symptoms, but primarily about rediscovering hope, personal strength, and quality of life.

Even when vulnerabilities persist, people can learn to shape their lives as they see fit. Recovery is unique for everyone and touches on various aspects of life: thoughts, feelings, meaning, relationships, and participation in society. Within this process, we distinguish between personal recovery (control, identity, and hope), social recovery (participation), and clinical recovery (recovery from symptoms and functioning).

An essential part of recovery is also gaining insight into which care and support is helpful for someone. This requires careful coordination, listening carefully, adapting to the individual's pace, and respecting their experiences and choices. Recovery occurs when people are given the space to find their own way, supported by appropriate help and guidance from their environment.

In the Caribbean, life's challenges often go hand in hand with social inequality, trauma, migration history, and strong community ties. Support should therefore not only be focused on the individual, but also on the people around them. The traditional Western care model often doesn't align well with this. Experiential knowledge is ideally suited to bridge this gap.

People who have experienced recovery themselves speak the same language, understand the cultural context, and offer recognition and hope. By involving experts by experience, support is created that is closer to the people and better integrated into daily life. In this context, recovery is not an individual achievement, but a collaborative process.

People, families, communities, experts by experience, and professionals work together on this. This requires safe, accessible spaces like the Green Recovery Space, where learning, meeting, and personal development converge.

Recovery thinking emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, primarily in the United States, among people with long-term mental health problems. They opposed the one-sided medical model in psychiatry, in which mental illnesses were often viewed as chronic and disabling. By sharing their personal stories, they demonstrated that recovery is possible, even without being fully "cured."

This experiential knowledge formed the basis for a renewed vision of mental healthcare. Over time, recovery has become a widely supported principle within policy, care, and support. Recovery support means that professionals, experts by experience, and family members guide people in their personal recovery process, instead of taking over or "curing" it.

Characteristic are equality, freedom of choice, hope, meaningful roles, and attention to the social context. Experience plays a central role in this, as it bridges the gap between people's world and professional care.

Experience is the professional use of personal recovery experience to support others. This knowledge is equivalent to professional and scientific knowledge and forms a bridge between the living environment and care.

Experts by experience bring hope, recognition, and practical wisdom to recovery processes.

What do we believe in?