ABOUT US

AntiVenom Recovery Ministry is a Christ-centered nonprofit dedicated to supporting families impacted by addiction and serving underserved communities. We recognize that addiction affects more than the individual—it impacts children, parents, relationships, and entire communities.

Our mission is to provide education, support, healthy experiences, and practical tools that promote healing, strengthen families, support long-term recovery, and help break unhealthy generational cycles. We serve individuals in recovery, children and families affected by addiction, military families, and underserved communities through a whole-person approach that addresses the mind, body, and spirit.

AntiVenom Recovery Ministry was founded in 2021 by Dawn Quijada, whose family has been personally impacted by addiction. Through those experiences, she witnessed firsthand how addiction, childhood trauma, parenting challenges, and unhealthy coping patterns can affect multiple generations. AntiVenom was built on the belief that faith, education, community, healthy relationships, and positive outlets can help individuals and families heal and create a different future.

How We Help

Parenting & Family Education: We provide free parenting education, including Nurturing Parenting programs, workshops, and practical tools that help parents strengthen relationships with their children, understand the effects of trauma, develop healthy parenting practices, and break unhealthy generational patterns.
Children & Family Support: We offer free family-bonding activities and monthly activities for children impacted by a parent’s addiction, creating opportunities for families to have fun, build healthy connections, and make positive memories together.
Substance Use Prevention & Recovery Support: We educate individuals and families about substance use, warning signs, risk and protective factors, and the impact addiction can have on the entire family. We also provide healthy coping strategies, activities, resources, and community connections that support long-term recovery and help reduce substance misuse in future generations.
Health & Wellness: We provide free fitness classes, outdoor activities, nutrition education, and wellness coaching. Our programs promote healthy outlets for managing stress while supporting physical and emotional well-being and recovery.
Military Family Support: We recognize the unique challenges military families may experience, including deployments, extended separations, frequent transitions, parenting stress, and reintegration. We provide opportunities for family connection, wellness, and practical support.
Spiritual Growth & Faith: As a Christ-centered organization, faith is at the heart of our work. We encourage spiritual growth through biblical principles, prayer, service, and opportunities that foster hope, purpose, resilience, and connection.
Community Outreach & Collaboration: We bring churches, recovery communities, families, and community organizations together to address addiction, overdose, family needs, and other challenges affecting our communities.

At AntiVenom Recovery Ministry, we believe lasting change happens when we support the whole person and the whole family. Our work brings together faith, education, wellness, prevention, family support, and community to help people heal, build healthier lives, break unhealthy generational cycles, and discover hope and purpose through Christ.

Together, we are turning Poison Into Power.

OUR FOUNDER

Dawn Quijada didn’t come to this ministry through theory or textbooks. Her passion for this work was shaped by how

addiction, trauma, and recovery have affected her own family across generations.

Dawn grew up as the child of a mother who struggled with alcoholism and later entered long-term recovery. Although Dawn did not develop a substance use disorder herself, she experienced firsthand how addiction affects the entire family. As a teenage mother carrying unresolved childhood trauma and without the parenting education she needed, she made mistakes with her own children that she later recognized had lasting effects. Addiction eventually impacted the next generation of her family as well.

Those experiences taught Dawn that recovery cannot focus only on the person struggling with substance use. Children need support. Parents need tools. Families need opportunities to reconnect and heal. And unhealthy patterns must be addressed if we want to prevent them from continuing into future generations.

Today, Dawn brings together lived experience, professional education, and faith. She is a certified addiction counselor, certified Nurturing Parenting facilitator, and ordained Christian minister. Her personal journey, professional work with individuals and families affected by addiction, and faith in Jesus Christ have shaped the mission of AntiVenom Recovery Ministry.

AntiVenom was founded from Dawn’s belief that pain does not have to be wasted. What we survive can become part of how we serve someone else. Her vision extends beyond helping individuals maintain recovery. She wants to help strengthen families, support children, educate parents, prevent substance misuse, promote physical and emotional wellness, and help families break generational cycles.

Above all, Dawn believes in the redemptive power of Jesus Christ and that healing, restoration, and a different future are possible.

This is the heart behind AntiVenom: turning Poison Into Power.