PARKERSBURG — A series of community discussions will be looking at exploring substance use and working towards identifying and enacting solutions.

The Parkersburg Engagement Project (PEP) is sponsoring the eight-part Substance Use Solution series which aims to explore the complex personal and professional impact caused by substance use and seek community input to identify and enact practical solutions for individuals and families affected.

The PEP is a pilot project with the goal of bringing people together to find a common solution that works for a number of people. The program started in January and is overseen by a nine-member steering committee and has sent out a survey to residents, community leaders, business leaders and more.

Circles Campaign of the Mid-Ohio Valley Inc. Executive Director Lisa Doyle-Parsons, who is helping to coordinate the discussions, said they received back a representative sampling of the area’s population.

“The survey showed that substance abuse, followed closely by housing and employment (having a living wage) were the top three concerns,” Doyle-Parsons said, adding the committee decided to move forward with looking at substance use issues and trying to identify potential solutions.

“Right now, the Solution series is a part of that,” Doyle-Parsons said.

This series will be happening over the month of September which is National Recovery Month.

The first session will be held 6 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 2, at St. Joseph’s Landing. It will be a public conversation on substance use with Josh Barker, the Director of Substance Abuse Prevention and Outreach with the Office of the West Virginia Attorney General, and West Virginia House of Delegates Member Scot Heckert, R-Wood, Chair of the Public Health Subcommittee.

“It will be a listening/conversational style session,” Doyle-Parsons said, adding Barker and Heckert will be sharing perspectives about how substance abuse has been impacting the state.

People will need to come in the main entrance near the coffee shop and volunteers will be on hand to help direct people where they need to go.

All the remaining sessions will be at First United Methodist Church at 1001 Juliana St. in Parkersburg.

“These next seven sessions will be focused on identifying some of those ideas from community members that might help reduce, prevent (substance abuse) or help those in recovery,” Doyle-Parsons said.

Those sessions will be held:

* Thursday, Sept. 4, from 6-7:30 p.m. with a focus on “Mental Health.”

* Tuesday, Sept. 9, from 1-2:30 p.m. with a focus on “Impacted Non-Users.”

* Thursday, Sept. 11, from 6-7:30 p.m. with a focus on “Legal.”

* Tuesday, Sept. 16, from 1-2:30 p.m. with a focus on the “Recovery Profession.”

* Thursday, Sept. 18, from 6-7:30 p.m. with a focus on “Medical.”

* Tuesday, Sept. 23, from 1-2:30 p.m. with a focus on “Systemic Barriers.”

* Thursday, Sept. 25, from 6-7:30 p.m. with a focus on “Lived Experience.”

Each session will feature a panel of around four people leading the discussions and talking about their experiences, challenges and how the issue they are focusing on that session affects them. There will then be breakout sessions where people talk to identify some potential solutions.

Doyle-Parsons said they are looking for people to come in and discuss their experiences whether they were directly impacted by substance abuse or people who may have been victims of break-ins or won’t let their children out to play because of people using in their neighborhoods and other people impacted in some way. The sessions will have people in the medical field talking about having to constantly treat substance abuse patients. Others will be talking about barriers to housing and employment for people in recovery.

“We want to hear from them,” Doyle-Parsons said. “This is an attempt to gather all perspectives and all thoughts and all ideas.

“We want to hear all sides and see what they might have in mind as potential solutions.”

Once all the sessions are completed the PEP Steering Committee will review all the information gathered and find things that were discussed often and see if they can enact something to address the situation.

They do have a budget set up to be able to enact some of the solutions the committee feels they can accomplish locally. There will eventually be an evaluation stage where they will look at how effective it was.

“This is a pilot project that hopefully can be replicated in other communities,” Doyle-Parsons said. “We were selected from multiple communities to do this project.”

Parkersburg City Councilwoman Wendy Tuck, who is serving on the steering committee, said PEP received a grant from the Shift Foundation to do this work.

The idea is that people in the community have come together to do various projects like fixing sidewalks and other things. The organizers believe that people can approach these kinds of problems in the same way.

“We want to hear from people with all kinds of different perspectives,” Tuck said, adding she acknowledges that whatever they come up with will not be the final all-encompassing solution, but it can be something that people can come together to do.

“If people care we can do something,” Tuck said, adding they will have $50,000 to be able enact a plan to address an issue they identify.

“It is a start,” she said.

For more information, call the PEP at 304-494-2441.