WINDHAM VILLAGE, Ohio — Hope Town, a Windham-based nonprofit that provides recovery housing and other resources for those dealing with addiction, has quickly become a go-to training space for artificial intelligence.
Since September, the nonprofit, created in 2019, has been offering AI training classes in tandem with AI Owl.
"We started going down this journey that AI was going to change the way we work," said Christopher Lattimer, automation supervisor at Hope Town. "For those of us that have beat statistics of not making it out of addiction, we're capable of so much more and now we're embracing a technology that's changing mankind and we're at the absolute forefront of it."
News 5 sat in on one of those classes, which took place virtually.
Hannah Schilling, who is based in Hamilton County, sat in.
"[AI has] been like a consultant I've been leaning on as a way to build efficiency," she said. "It's been an art findings way to weave in and create this tapestry where AI is a part of that work and it's not leading the work."
So far, they've taught about 100 people since launching the courses in September.
The idea was born out of Hope Town's own curiosity and its own early integration of AI such as its virtual receptionist.
"We wanted to build it for ourselves," Ted St. John, founder of Hope Town, said. "Nonprofits, we're lean, we're a small organization, we do a lot of things and we need help. So we looked at AI as an assistant and took that and realized other nonprofits are going to need help and other people are going to need your help."
Now they're taking the innovation of AI and arming those in all parts of Portage County and Ohio.
"There's a lot of folks who come into recovery that we're going to be upskilling and teaching them how to create agency for themselves through this structure and they can be in front of this," St. John said.
To learn more about the program, click here.
Clay LePard is the Ashtabula, Geauga and Portage counties reporter at News 5 Cleveland. Follow him on X @ClayLePard, on Facebook ClayLePardTV or email him at Clay.LePard@wews.com.
