Mission: To improve the lives of the seriously mentally ill through job training, education and community involvement
Vision: The stigma of mental illness will disappear and the mentally ill become productive happy citizens

Description:
City Voices recently became a 501c3 non profit org, but has been committed to helping the mentally ill for over ten years in New York City. The thing that sets it apart from other mental health programs is that it is run entirely by people who have mental illnesses. The company utilizes peer support and self-help techniques where the mentally ill are supporting, training and empowering their peers in the following areas: journalism; advocacy; workplace skills; computer skills and community involvement.

History:
In 1995, City Voices founder, the late Ken Steele, began his recovery from over 30 years of hospitalizations for paranoid schizophrenia. He was a psychiatric patient at a small clinic in Brooklyn called the Park Slope Center for Mental Health. There, he was prescribed a medication that helped alleviate his symptoms for him to more fully participate in life.

He began a newsletter called Park Slope Center News through which he encouraged other patients to write poetry and share their opinions and personal recovery stories. He wrote pieces on politics, helpful resources, and government benefits issues to empower the patients.

Eventually, his mind expanded and he enlisted the help of many high level people from government, the not-for-profit business community and the pharmaceutical corporation Janssen, the maker of his medication Risperdal.

The newsletter was renamed New York City Voices and became a 24-page newspaper in quality with a circulation that reached a high of 15,000 to 20,000 copies bi-monthly. What most consider his main achievement was the Mental Health Voter Empowerment Project that registered and educated many thousands of people living with serious mental illness on how and where to vote. This gave Mr. Steele a lot of political power as New York State and City politicians believed that he could sway the votes of thousands of people living with mental illness. In fact, Hillary Clinton gave him a personal call during her campaign for the Senate.

Popular print media such as The New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, and Reader’s Digest included articles on Mr. Steele’s life and work; The New York Times put his story and work on their front page twice (search “ken steele mental illness” in the archives at www.nytimes.com). Popular television media such as 20/20 and other local and national news programs interviewed him and covered his life and work.

Ken Steele died young at the age of 52 in 2000, a day or two after publishing his memoir The Day the Voices Stopped, which would have reached a much wider audience had Mr. Steele lived to promote it internationally.

Today, City Voices is run by a group of people who live with mental illnesses, including his protégé Dan Frey, a paranoid schizophrenic himself, who directs New York City Voices and other programs.

Since Mr. Steele’s death, the positive accomplishments of City Voices have been:
**increased participation at all levels of the organization by people living with mental illness;
**conferences, fundraisers, entertainment and educational events have been organized for the mental health community;
**New York City Voices improved in the quality of its content and in its presentation;
**many people living with mental illness have moved on to gainful employment after their training through City Voices; and
**City Voices has received approval from the IRS and is now a tax-exempt non-profit corporation

Contact people:

Dan Frey, Executive Director, (718) 643-6758, (email) Paul Chipkin, Vice President, (212) 595-4217, (email) Miriam Wexler, Secretary, (212) 989-6215, (email)

Address:

1958 Fulton Street (300A) Brooklyn, NY 11233 (See a map)

Directions:

Take the C train to Ralph Ave in Brooklyn, half a block from train station.   Nearest Metro/Subway Stop: C to Ralph Ave,   Walk distance (in minutes): 5