BOSTON, MA May 30, 2023 – The Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative (PAARI) is pleased to announce the pledge of a generous grant of $150,000 from the Evelyn Lilly Lutz Foundation. These funds will be used to develop capacity at the community level to respond to emerging threats in substance use disorder (SUD) in the North Shore.
In 2017, The Evelyn Lilly Lutz Foundation was one of the first major donors to PAARI. They helped the organization take their work from a small start-up nonprofit to become a nationally influential law enforcement/public health organization. Funding from the Evelyn Lilly Lutz Foundation allowed for the creation of PAARI programs and ideas tested on the North Shore to become foundations for programs introduced nationwide. Through this new grant, PAARI will continue to practice SUD-related systems in the North Shore and document and disseminate results through its over 650 law enforcement partners nationwide.
“We are pleased and honored to grant this money to PAARI, an organization that has been important for us to support over these last few years,” says Suzanne Graves, Chair of the Evelyn Lilly Lutz Foundation. “We are eager to see how their work positively impacts the community members of the North Shore. “
The funds from the grant will be used in three high-priority areas: To respond to the pervasive presence of fentanyl mixed with other drugs, to address emerging threats such as xylazine and to respond to the continued threat of alcohol and cannabis on the north shore.
“We are grateful that the Evelyn Lilly Lutz Foundation has been a continued investor in the PAARI model. They have helped us build systems that support the North Shore yet are also scalable to the rest of the nation,“ says Zoe Grover, Executive Director of PAARI. “We are looking forward to utilizing the grant to tackle several different high-priority areas in their community.“
“We thank the Evelyn Lilly Lutz Foundation for their continued support of PAARI over the last six years,“ says John Rosenthal, PAARI Co-Founder, and Executive Board Member. “Their investment into our organization has been an integral part to the success of our programs and helped us save lives from preventable overdose death.“
Written by, Isabella Nowak
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About PAARI: The Police Assisted Addiction & Recovery Initiative (PAARI) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to help law enforcement agencies nationwide create non-arrest pathways to treatment and recovery. Founded alongside the groundbreaking Gloucester, Mass., Police Department Angel Initiative in June 2015, PAARI has been a driving force behind this rapidly expanding community policing movement. We provide technical assistance, strategic guidance, connection to training resources, and other capacity-building resources to more than 650 police departments in 40 states.
PAARI works with more than 130 law enforcement agencies in Massachusetts alone. PAARI and our law enforcement partners are working towards a collective vision where non-arrest diversion programs become a standard policing practice across the country, thereby reducing overdose deaths, expanding access to treatment, improving public safety, reducing crime, diverting people away from the criminal justice system, and increasing trust between law enforcement and their communities. Our programs and partners have saved tens of thousands of lives, changed police culture, and reshaped the national conversation about the opioid epidemic since its founding in June 2015. Learn more at paariusa.org.
