The City of Parsons and the Labette Center for Mental Health Services presents Help and Hope: an Evening of Recovery to southeast Kansas tomorrow night.

 

The evening will feature stories of hope and recovery from those successfully battling addiction. Guest Speaker Jimmy McGill will address the audience as the keynote speaker. McGill is an Arkansas native, writer, and motivational speaker who battled addiction for 23 years and spent more than a decade in the Arkansas prison system. In sobriety, he says he discovered a deep sense of purpose—first as a volunteer, then through leadership roles within Arkansas’s recovery system.

 

McGill rose to become the State Recovery Manager in the Drug Director’s office and went on to found Next Step Recovery Housing, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting recovering offenders through sober living and essential services. He has detailed his struggles in his book From Prison to Purpose. McGill’s work has earned him the Arkansas Trailblazer Award in 2021, the Peer Legacy Award  in 2023, as well as a leadership prize named in his honor.

 

Tomorrow night’s event takes place from 6 to 8pm at the Carnegie Arts Center, located at 117 South 17th Street in Parsons.