Finding a Support Group

What is a Self-Help Support Group

About SHARE!

Stories

The Need

A Center for self-help meetings and events: SHARE! the Self-Help And Recovery Exchange is the most comprehensive self-help community center in Los Angeles.

The mission of SHARE! is to help people in Los Angeles pursue change and personal growth by empowering them to change their own lives and providing them a loving, safe, non-judgmental place where they can find community, information and support.

SHARE! hosts fifty self-help support groups each week, serving more than 2,500 people a month.

SHARE!’s Meeting Directory shows the diverse groups which meet at SHARE!, many of which cannot be found elsewhere in the County. SHARE! provides technical assistance, training, advertising and advice to many self-help groups in the County. In addition, SHARE! has been making 400 referrals a month to people looking for self-help groups in all parts of Los Angeles County.

SHARE! has taken an active part in the community, helping agencies and hospitals make better use of self-help groups. SHARE! has been instrumental in organizing the Westside Teen Health Network to create teen support groups addressing teen health problems. SHARE! convinced the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health Service Area Advisory Committee V to pick Self-Help as an area of study. They have drafted an Agreement Regarding Self-Help to encourage agencies to become better educated about and make more referrals to self-help groups.

SHARE! has been privately supported by individuals in the self-help community and operated by nearly 100 volunteers. The idea for SHARE! grew out of Ruth Hollman’s frustration with the self-help groups she attended, repeatedly facing the same operational problems. In organizing SHARE!, she used the same community organizing skills she had developed directing self-supporting micro-economic development projects in Thailand: (a) involving as many people in the community as wished to be involved; and (b) insuring that all decision-making be informed and shared. Elizabeth Hartigan was an early and essential volunteer. She brought a background in journalism, public relations, and administrative management to SHARE!, from her experience as a columnist for the Daily News and in her current capacity as bilingual editorial advisor of LA Youth, a non-profit newspaper written by and about Los Angeles teens. Under the auspices of Emotional Health Association, a California 501(c)(3) corporation, the self-help community formed a board and working committees. A year later in December 1992, SHARE! opened its doors at an abandoned Venice warehouse with a leaky roof. In August 1994, SHARE! moved to its present, much nicer, location in Mar Vista. The new facility provided for the self-help group meetings and allowed SHARE! to sublease to self-help group headquarters and other related activities. Today SHARE! is the leader in self-help activities in Los Angeles. SHARE! has attracted media attention from National Public Radio, the Los Angeles Times, the Daily Breeze, Channel Nine News, KNX Radio, KTYM Radio, KLSX Radio and the Argonaut.

We are privately funded through donations. SHARE! Is a project of the Emotional Health Association, a California non-profit 501(c)3 corporation.