Redemption House is a network of transition homes for women assigned by the courts as an alternative to jail who desire to redeem their lives from past destructive behavior.
Officially opened in August 2012 at the home on Fairfield Avenue, the program, at a minimum, takes eight months to complete, with some women choosing to remain for up to six months after completing the program.
The women are grateful to be at Redemption House, recognizing it as a chance for a fresh start and ages range from 18 to 65.
In recognition of PTSD awareness month, WBOI’s Julia Meek and Redemption House founder and CEO Tomi Cardin discuss the trauma, the disorder and inroads being made on the re-entry landscape in Northeast Indiana.
Learn more and connect with the organization at the Redemption House website.
Our conversation is transcribed here:
Julia Meek: Tomi Cardin, welcome.
Tomi Cardin: Thank you so much for having me.
Julia Meek: Now, your mission lies in your business name, 'Redemption,' specifically for young women. Now, at its core, why here, why now is this critical?
Tomi Cardin: Julia, Redemption House is vital to the success of our community, and that is because we created homes for women who are at some of the lowest places they can be.
They find themselves lost in addiction, lost in our criminal justice systems, and without hope for their future.
So we stepped in to create places where they could work on putting their lives back together.
Julia Meek: Okay, that cycle of destruction, drug use, that you're trying to beat, you are no stranger to the horrors. How did you jump into helping others after turning your own life around?
Tomi Cardin: I actually celebrated 27 years clean this past January.
Julia Meek: Congratulations.
Tomi Cardin: And that was a huge turning point for me. I was still very young, I was lucky. I count myself very blessed that I was able to find recovery and salvation.
My faith and my recovery both kicked off at the same time back in 1999. And ever since then I have been on this journey to heal myself.
Now the first few years were very hard, as anyone's walk in recovery is. There are ups and downs, there are struggles, as the same with my faith.
I had many years, childhood traumas, abuses, and then just a series of bad decisions I had to learn to overcome.
So, when I realized back in 2007, when I became involved in jail and prison ministry as a volunteer chaplain, that I had so much in common with these women.
I may not have ended up in jail, but I could have. I just didn't get caught. And yet I identified with their brokenness, I identified with their lack of hope, and I really, really saw myself in their lives as a person who could provide that space.
Julia Meek: Proof, in fact, that it could be provided.
Tomi Cardin: It was working in my life, and if my life could be used as an example for the women that I was meeting in the jail, then I wanted to figure out a way to make that happen.
Julia Meek: That's powerful and good for you, good for all of you.
Tomi Cardin: Thank you, thank you.
Julia Meek: Now things were vastly different, even a decade or two ago.
So, once you had the vision, the power, and the determination, how long did it take you to turn that into reality, and how hard of a sell was it at first?
Tomi Cardin: So, I started in jail and prison ministry as a volunteer chaplain in 2004, so I'm well over 20 years into working with this population.
And it was around 2007 that the vision for what would become Redemption House emerged in my mind and in my heart. And it took about five years of toiling in our community, I call it.
It was that season of making connection, of continuing to learn, educating myself, making or forming relationships with other leaders in our community.
And then, in 2012 the opportunity to start Redemption House emerged. And I took that with both hands, realizing that this was going to be the thing that I was called to do.
This was it. I found it. My perseverance and tenacity had paid off, and we were going to open a home for women.
Julia Meek: And you were “we" by then. You had your posse building up, and there with you.
Tomi Cardin: I had developed relationships all over the community, so we had advocates already.
Just from my going into the jail two, three days a week, working with the women in the jail, the sheriffs knew me, the corrections officers knew me.
Churches, leaders in other communities and other organizations knew of me, just because I was so committed.
And I believed in these women. I knew that I was going to be a part of something that was going to help them. I just didn't know how it was all going to happen.
Julia Meek: Did you realize back then what a voice you could put together and exercise and get it out there?
Tomi Cardin: No, I did not. [chuckles] I still saw myself, and some days I still struggle, but I saw myself as that broken woman.
It was hard to realize that there was a call on my life that actually used that brokenness as a part of its strength, a power.
Then, over time, and again, Redemption House has been around for 14 years now.
I am aware of the fact that I have been able to be a part of conversations and be at tables and be a part of collaborations that have truly made an impact.
So, I don't take for granted the opportunity and the gift of influence, because it doesn't come by accident, but it also can be abused, and I don't want that.
Julia Meek: You also don't shy away from whatever's out there. And meanwhile, regarding your own skill set, which we are certainly getting a good idea of, what would you say are your biggest, baddest strengths?
Tomi Cardin: My biggest, baddest strength is that I realize that I am not something spectacular, but I have overcome some things that have destroyed others.
And I'm willing to use those lessons to lift up someone else. It's not because I think I'm spectacular.
I think that what has happened in my life, the healing, the growth, the confidence, the opportunity, the impact, all of that is because I never gave up, and that is a strength.
Julia Meek: Indeed. And would you walk us through a day or an example of the progress?
Tomi Cardin: Yeah, so a woman's journey through Redemption House, she comes in through a court involved sentence. So she's gotten in trouble with the law, that's the bottom line of it.
She is in a criminal justice program. And they would then find her eligible for placement at Redemption House, a restorative ministry.
We are a faith-based organization, and yet we are a preferred partner of the criminal justice program. That's also something I'm very proud of.
So, a woman comes in because she has to, she is ordered to, and that occasionally comes with some resistance. But also, she's welcomed and accepted for exactly who she is and where she is in her life.
No mistake, no struggle causes us to look at her any differently. All we see is potential when a woman walks in the front door.
Now she gets opportunity to tap into that potential, but we're going to put her in situations and in environments that may not be what she came from.
Hopefully it fits different, and she's going to learn new skill sets, and she's going to gain days after days, weeks after weeks, and months after months of recovery time.
She's going to learn life skills, she's going to do cooking classes, and we're going to do exercise classes, and we do art projects, and we garden, and we do....we do life, together as a part of her court-ordered sentence, which is, I think, pretty neat in how that works.
And when a woman gets to the end of her journey with us, she's learned new things about herself, she's let go of some pieces that she need not take into her future, and she has hope, and that's kind of how the journey works.
Julia Meek: It's a wonderful process. It sounds, well doable. It certainly wouldn't be easy, but it's doable with dignity. How important is just that word, dignity?
Tomi Cardin: No woman is there by accident. I believe that they're divinely appointed to be in our program at the exact moment they walk in.
So I know that there's a plan for their lives, and sometimes I have to believe it for them until they can realize that they need to believe it for themselves.
Julia Meek: That's another one of your strengths we've just uncovered.
Tomi Cardin: [chuckles] Thank you.
Julia Meek: Now, another awareness gaining momentum around that time was PTSD. Vets, then victims and families of violent crime were first addressed, and it was a miracle.
Where was your population on that scale, then?
Tomi Cardin: My population were women dealing with criminal justice involvement, addiction, homelessness, struggle, trauma.
I'm not sure they were even on the radar. I think that PTSD started, the awareness really rose out of its connection to veterans coming back from a traumatic situation.
And then I believe that society started to realize that post-traumatic stress disorder can result from so many traumatic experiences.
And a lot of my women deal with childhood traumas that have been repressed that then surface in their lives, in their decision making.
And when you don't know how to process those emotions, or the memories, or the traumas, you often turn to drugs or alcohol.
And then that starts you down a path that leads to so many other traumatic situations that you're just perpetuating your own cycles, and you don't know how to stop it.
Redemption House can step in, slam on the brakes, learn some new skills, put some time into healing, and learn to process these things that nearly all of us have in some capacity.
Julia Meek: How about the just knowing it's okay to admit you have it, and there's someone out there that also is there to admit and help you?
Tomi Cardin: It's okay to not be okay, [Julia chuckles] but it's not okay to stay not okay.
Julia Meek: That's loud and clear.
Tomi Cardin: Yes! [laughs]
Julia Meek: Where you are. [chuckles]
Tomi Cardin: Yes.
Julia Meek: And once on the road to redemption, which is never an easy path, how does your program inspire success in the face of life's inevitable temptations?
Tomi Cardin: Redemption House has evolved over the years. We started with the one house, the court ordered transitional living home.
We now have seven houses, and what we've developed are four phases of progress through the program. So, we have phase one, where every woman starts.
It's the same house, every woman starts in this house together, and that house has staff 24/7. Our staff has a combined 75 years of recovery experience among themselves.
Some of them are graduates of our program, so they understand what it's like to walk in those front doors.
So that first intense phase of the program really sets the foundation for what comes after. Which would be phase two, where they move into another house, and they've earned more privilege and more opportunity to test some of their boundaries.
When they complete that, they graduate, and they become alumni of our program, and they can apply for a spot in our graduate housing program.
We have rooms, apartments, and family housing available for our graduates who've reunited with their children.
And ultimately, phase four is independence, and that's when we have walked alongside them for somewhere between three and five years.
We've watched them gain work experience and work history. They've cleaned up their credit, they've completed their core involvement.
They've gone back to school, got their driver's license, they've learned all of these new things, accomplished goals, and set even further ones out.
And now they're ready to step out on their own.
Julia Meek: That sounds too good to be true, but it is!
Tomi Cardin: But it's true! [both laugh] It's happening, Julia. Every day--we get to walk along women, right beside them.
They come into the program so broken without hope, day after day. I just can't stress enough the importance of just being present, providing some boundaries and some guidance and love.
And then we get to celebrate, go to kids' graduations when their moms were in our program, when they were in elementary school.
Julia Meek: So it does actually literally go generational on you as you proceed, even after these short 14 years!
Tomi Cardin: Absolutely, absolutely! I have parents thanking me for giving them their children back. I have grandparents thanking me for reuniting them with their grandchildren.
And I have kids thanking me for giving them their moms back, and that's incredible. Actually, have grandkids too.
I mean, there's just so much change and healing that takes place just because a woman was court-ordered to participate in our program.
Julia Meek: Avalanche, explosion...
Tomi Cardin: Of success, how fun is that? [both laugh]
Julia Meek: Yes, yes, good for you all. And I do wonder that group support energy? Everyone's in this together. How big a part does it play in the whole journey?
You're setting up for the rest of your life. Now they've almost got a family or family values they could only have wished they had.
Especially post graduation, what's the feeling? What's the energy in your population?
Tomi Cardin: Well, Julia, they don't "almost" gain a family, they gain a family. And we are there for the long haul, as far as they will allow us.
When it's completely their choice, we're always going to be there. And it may not be always sunshine and rainbows.
Sometimes you need someone in your family to speak truth to you when you're getting off track, or where you are putting yourself in danger of falling back into the old ways of thinking and behaving.
You know they say "people, places, and things?" Well, it's important that you have someone that can remind you of what people, places, and things you worked so hard to overcome.
Julia Meek: And what they represent, of course, too.
Tomi Cardin: Yes, and that's what the alumni network does for our ladies as well.
We have 14 years worth of graduates, over 700 women have been through our program, and we have the hits and the misses, and then we have those who missed initially and have gotten back up, and now they're hits.
I mean, it just is a cycle of healing, and it takes seeds being planted. You do three steps forward, two steps back, until all of a sudden you don't even remember what the starting line looked like.
Julia Meek: And you're only looking out there at this wonderful horizon that spells hope.
Tomi Cardin: And there are people that believe in you, and that matters.
Julia Meek: That's...[chuckles] yes. So, okay, Tomi, tracking this problem around the country now.
How do we compare with other cities our size in young women needing such help, being able to help them, and the success in your own measures? Can you measure it?
Tomi Cardin: We measure how many women start our program and complete it, and then we're able to track women who, as alumni, are out there testing their own boundaries.
So we look at years and generational impact. But as far as our community, I feel like we are very comparable to other communities our size, and we may even be a little bit further ahead.
Because our social service community in Fort Wayne and Allen County, and even across this corner of Indiana, we work so well together to complement one another.
And I think that collaborative spirit just blesses those we serve in ways that are nearly impossible to measure, other than you see women continuing to succeed.
So I'm very proud to be a part of this community. I'm very proud to have started something here that is now taking other organizations and leaders up under our umbrella to help them find their footing.
And I'm like, we shared earlier, I'm grateful for the opportunity and the influence that comes with just showing up every day.
Taking the hits and keep on going. You fall down, but you don't stay down.
Julia Meek: We like the way you think, {Tomi chuckles] and yes, can believe in it, and it works. It's real, it's real.
So, as we continue to look forward, and you continue to have the success, what's on the medium and long term horizon for you and yours at Redemption House?
Tomi Cardin: So, on the horizon is just to continue to create this space where women can heal.
Our staff is incredible. Our program is solid. What we want to do then is broaden our reach. We want to not just grow ourselves, but we want to grow each other.
I understand after this many years in nonprofit leadership that it is hard. It's very hard to dive into traumatic situations with people who may or may not know just how broken they are.
And then you not only have to point out their brokenness, but then you have to force them into situations that help them learn new skills, so that they could heal, and it takes a toll.
What I'd love to do is lead the way at Redemption House for other leaders to come together to not only serve the populations we've committed our lives to in a more generationally impacting way, but to support one another, so that we can look out for each other as we're taking these hits over and over.
Julia Meek: And have that safety net sort of permanently in place.
Tomi Cardin: Not just for the clients, but for us, the ones that continue to show up day after day.
Julia Meek: Great point, and now, this last year has been a hard one in so many ways, especially for nonprofits and their populations, Tomi.
How are you and yours faring by now? Working through it, is it hard to carry on?
Tomi Cardin: Yes, [chuckles] just being completely honest. It's never easy, but it's always worth it. Leading through the last year has been challenging.
There's so much turmoil in our world, in the political landscape, the financial landscape, what the future holds.
There's fear, there's a scarcity mentality, and then there's just the bottom line, where things are more expensive. Dollars don't go as far as they once did.
And the support can be, you know, charitable contributions are often one of the things that take the hit first.
But that doesn't mean our needs go are any less, they're actually a little greater.
So, thinking outside of the box, being willing to partner and collaborate in ways that take that pressure off of organizations when they come together?
If we're not trying to recreate the wheels or duplicate the services, if we can come together and share, then those dollars that people are committed to investing in us as Redemption House or our friends and partners around the community, it can go further.
Julia Meek: And the impact can be greater.
Tomi Cardin: The impact can be greater. The women's lives we serve can be impacted so much more deeply, and then we are not wearing ourselves out swimming upstream.
Julia Meek: Good luck on all of that.
Tomi Cardin: [laughs] Thank you!
Julia Meek: Now your own redemption begat this master plan, giving others their shot at it and fueling their fire, Tommy, thank you for all of that.
So, how do you keep going strong? What motivates you when you're at your lowest to motivate them?
Tomi Cardin, welcome.
Tomi Cardin
Thank you so much for having me.
Julia Meek
Now, your mission lies in your business name, 'Redemption,' specifically for young women. Now, at its core, why here, why now is this critical?
Tomi Cardin
Julia, Redemption House is vital to the success of our community, and that is because we created homes for women who are at some of the lowest places they can be. They find themselves lost in addiction, lost in our criminal justice systems, and without hope for their future. So we stepped in to create places where they could work on putting their lives back together.
Julia Meek
Okay, that cycle of destruction, drug use, that you're trying to beat, you are no stranger to the horrors. How did you jump into helping others after turning your own life around?
Tomi Cardin
I actually celebrated 27 years clean this past January.
Julia Meek
Congratulations.
Tomi Cardin
And that was a huge turning point for me. I was still very young, I was lucky. I count myself very blessed that I was able to find recovery and salvation. My faith and my recovery both kicked off at the same time back in 1999. And ever since then I have been on this journey to heal myself. Now the first few years were very hard, as anyone's walk in recovery is. There are ups and downs, there are struggles, as the same with my faith. I had many years, childhood traumas, abuses, and then just a series of bad decisions I had to learn to overcome. So, when I realized back in 2007, when I became involved in jail and prison ministry as a volunteer chaplain, that I had so much in common with these women. I may not have ended up in jail, but I could have. I just didn't get caught. And yet I identified with their brokenness, I identified with their lack of hope, and I really, really saw myself in their lives as a person who could provide that space.
Julia Meek
Proof, in fact, that it could be provided.
Tomi Cardin
It was working in my life, and if my life could be used as an example for the women that I was meeting in the jail, then I wanted to figure out a way to make that happen.
Julia Meek
That's powerful and good for you, good for all of you.
Tomi Cardin
Thank you, thank you.
Julia Meek
Now things were vastly different, even a decade or two ago. So, once you had the vision, the power, and the determination, how long did it take you to turn that into reality, and how hard of a sell was it at first?
Tomi Cardin
So, I started in jail and prison ministry as a volunteer chaplain in 2004, so I'm well over 20 years into working with this population. And it was around 2007 that the vision for what would become Redemption House emerged in my mind and in my heart. And it took about five years of toiling in our community, I call it. It was that season of making connection, of continuing to learn, educating myself, making or forming relationships with other leaders in our community. And then, in 2012 the opportunity to start Redemption House emerged. And I took that with both hands, realizing that this was going to be the thing that I was called to do. This was it. I found it. My perseverance and tenacity had paid off, and we were going to open a home for women.
Julia Meek
And you were “we" by then. You had your posse building up, and there with you.
Tomi Cardin
I had developed relationships all over the community, so we had advocates already. Just from my going into the jail two, three days a week, working with the women in the jail, the sheriffs knew me, the corrections officers knew me. Churches, leaders in other communities and other organizations knew of me, just because I was so committed. And I believed in these women. I knew that I was going to be a part of something that was going to help them. I just didn't know how it was all going to happen.
Julia Meek
Did you realize back then what a voice you could put together and exercise and get it out there?
Tomi Cardin
No, I did not. [chuckles] I still saw myself, and some days I still struggle, but I saw myself as that broken woman. It was hard to realize that there was a call on my life that actually used that brokenness as a part of its strength, a power. Then, over time, and again, Redemption House has been around for 14 years now, I am aware of the fact that I have been able to be a part of conversations and be at tables and be a part of collaborations that have truly made an impact. So, I don't take for granted the opportunity and the gift of influence, because it doesn't come by accident, but it also can be abused, and I don't want that.
Julia Meek
You also don't shy away from whatever's out there. And meanwhile, regarding your own skill set, which we are certainly getting a good idea of, what would you say are your biggest, baddest strengths?
Tomi Cardin
My biggest, baddest strength is that I realize that I am not something spectacular, but I have overcome some things that have destroyed others. And I'm willing to use those lessons to lift up someone else. It's not because I think I'm spectacular. I think that what has happened in my life, the healing, the growth, the confidence, the opportunity, the impact, all of that is because I never gave up, and that is a strength.
Julia Meek
Indeed. And would you walk us through a day or an example of the progress?
Tomi Cardin
Yeah, so a woman's journey through Redemption House, she comes in through a court involved sentence. So she's gotten in trouble with the law, that's the bottom line of it. She is in a criminal justice program. And they would then find her eligible for placement at Redemption House, a restorative ministry. We are a faith-based organization, and yet we are a preferred partner of the criminal justice program. That's also something I'm very proud of. So, a woman comes in because she has to, she is ordered to, and that occasionally comes with some resistance. But also, she's welcomed and accepted for exactly who she is and where she is in her life. No mistake, no struggle causes us to look at her any differently. All we see is potential when a woman walks in the front door. Now she gets opportunity to tap into that potential, but we're going to put her in situations and in environments that may not be what she came from. Hopefully it fits different, and she's going to learn new skill sets, and she's going to gain days after days, weeks after weeks, and months after months of recovery time. She's going to learn life skills, she's going to do cooking classes, and we're going to do exercise classes, and we do art projects, and we garden, and we do....we do life, together as a part of her court-ordered sentence, which is, I think, pretty neat in how that works. And when a woman gets to the end of her journey with us, she's learned new things about herself, she's let go of some pieces that she need not take into her future, and she has hope, and that's kind of how the journey works.
Julia Meek
It's a wonderful process. It sounds, well doable. It certainly wouldn't be easy, but it's doable with dignity. How important is just that word, dignity?
Tomi Cardin
No woman is there by accident. I believe that they're divinely appointed to be in our program at the exact moment they walk in. So I know that there's a plan for their lives, and sometimes I have to believe it for them until they can realize that they need to believe it for themselves.
Julia Meek
That's another one of your strengths we've just uncovered.
Tomi Cardin
[chuckles] Thank you.
Julia Meek
Now, another awareness gaining momentum around that time was PTSD. Vets, then victims and families of violent crime were first addressed, and it was a miracle. Where was your population on that scale, then?
Tomi Cardin
My population were women dealing with criminal justice involvement, addiction, homelessness, struggle, trauma. I'm not sure they were even on the radar. I think that PTSD started, the awareness really rose out of its connection to veterans coming back from a traumatic situation. And then I believe that society started to realize that post-traumatic stress disorder can result from so many traumatic experiences, and a lot of my women deal with childhood traumas that have been repressed that then surface in their lives, in their decision making. And when you don't know how to process those emotions, or the memories, or the traumas, you often turn to drugs or alcohol. And then that starts you down a path that leads to so many other traumatic situations that you're just perpetuating your own cycles, and you don't know how to stop it. Redemption House can step in, slam on the brakes, learn some new skills, put some time into healing, and learn to process these things that nearly all of us have in some capacity.
Julia Meek
How about the just knowing it's okay to admit you have it, and there's someone out there that also is there to admit and help you?
Tomi Cardin
It's okay to not be okay, [Julia chuckles] but it's not okay to stay not okay.
Julia Meek
That's loud and clear.
Tomi Cardin
Yes! [laughs]
Julia Meek
Where you are. [chuckles]
Tomi Cardin
Yes.
Julia Meek
And once on the road to redemption, which is never an easy path, how does your program inspire success in the face of life's inevitable temptations?
Tomi Cardin
Redemption House has evolved over the years. We started with the one house, the court ordered transitional living home. We now have seven houses, and what we've developed are four phases of progress through the program. So, we have phase one, where every woman starts. It's the same house, every woman starts in this house together, and that house has staff 24/7. Our staff has a combined 75 years of recovery experience among themselves. Some of them are graduates of our program, so they understand what it's like to walk in those front doors. So that first intense phase of the program really sets the foundation for what comes after. Which would be phase two, where they move into another house, and they've earned more privilege and more opportunity to test some of their boundaries. When they complete that, they graduate, and they become alumni of our program, and they can apply for a spot in our graduate housing program. We have rooms, apartments, and family housing available for our graduates who've reunited with their children. And ultimately, phase four is independence, and that's when we have walked alongside them for somewhere between three and five years. We've watched them gain work experience and work history. They've cleaned up their credit, they've completed their core involvement. They've gone back to school, got their driver's license, they've learned all of these new things, accomplished goals, and set even further ones out. And now they're ready to step out on their own.
Julia Meek
That sounds too good to be true, but it is!
Tomi Cardin
But it's true! [both laugh] It's happening, Julia. Every day--we get to walk along women, right beside them. They come into the program so broken without hope, day after day. I just can't stress enough the importance of just being present, providing some boundaries and some guidance and love. And then we get to celebrate, go to kids' graduations when their moms were in our program, when they were in elementary school.
Julia Meek
So it does actually literally go generational on you as you proceed, even after these short 14 years!
Tomi Cardin
Absolutely, absolutely! I have parents thanking me for giving them their children back. I have grandparents thanking me for reuniting them with their grandchildren. And I have kids thanking me for giving them their moms back, and that's incredible. Actually, have grandkids too. I mean, there's just so much change and healing that takes place just because a woman was court-ordered to participate in our program.
Julia Meek
Avalanche, explosion...
Tomi Cardin
Of success, how fun is that? [both laugh]
Julia Meek
Yes, yes, good for you all. And I do wonder that group support energy? Everyone's in this together. How big a part does it play in the whole journey? You're setting up for the rest of your life. Now they've almost got a family or family values they could only have wished they had. Especially post graduation, what's the feeling? What's the energy in your population?
Tomi Cardin
Well, Julia, they don't "almost" gain a family, they gain a family. And we are there for the long haul, as far as they will allow us. When it's completely their choice, we're always going to be there. And it may not be always sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes you need someone in your family to speak truth to you when you're getting off track, or where you are putting yourself in danger of falling back into the old ways of thinking and behaving. You know they say "people, places, and things?" Well, it's important that you have someone that can remind you of what people, places, and things you worked so hard to overcome.
Julia Meek
And what they represent, of course, too.
Tomi Cardin
Yes, and that's what the alumni network does for our ladies as well. We have 14 years worth of graduates, over 700 women have been through our program, and we have the hits and the misses, and then we have those who missed initially and have gotten back up, and now they're hits. I mean, it just is a cycle of healing, and it takes seeds being planted. You do three steps forward, two steps back, until all of a sudden you don't even remember what the starting line looked like.
Julia Meek
And you're only looking out there at this wonderful horizon that spells hope.
Tomi Cardin
And there are people that believe in you, and that matters.
Julia Meek
That's...[chuckles] yes. So, okay, Tomi, tracking this problem around the country now. How do we compare with other cities our size in young women needing such help, being able to help them, and the success in your own measures? Can you measure it?
Tomi Cardin
We measure how many women start our program and complete it, and then we're able to track women who, as alumni, are out there testing their own boundaries. So we look at years and generational impact. But as far as our community, I feel like we are very comparable to other communities our size, and we may even be a little bit further ahead. Because our social service community in Fort Wayne and Allen County, and even across this corner of Indiana, we work so well together to complement one another. And I think that collaborative spirit just blesses those we serve in ways that are nearly impossible to measure, other than you see women continuing to succeed. So I'm very proud to be a part of this community. I'm very proud to have started something here that is now taking other organizations and leaders up under our umbrella to help them find their footing. And I'm like, we shared earlier, I'm grateful for the opportunity and the influence that comes with just showing up every day. Taking the hits and keep on going. You fall down, but you don't stay down.
Julia Meek
We like the way you think, {Tomi chuckles] and yes, can believe in it, and it works. It's real, it's real. So, as we continue to look forward, and you continue to have the success, what's on the medium and long term horizon for you and yours at Redemption House?
Tomi Cardin
So, on the horizon is just to continue to create this space where women can heal. Our staff is incredible. Our program is solid. What we want to do then is broaden our reach. We want to not just grow ourselves, but we want to grow each other. I understand after this many years in nonprofit leadership that it is hard. It's very hard to dive into traumatic situations with people who may or may not know just how broken they are. And then you not only have to point out their brokenness, but then you have to force them into situations that help them learn new skills, so that they could heal, and it takes a toll. What I'd love to do is lead the way at Redemption House for other leaders to come together to not only serve the populations we've committed our lives to in a more generationally impacting way, but to support one another, so that we can look out for each other as we're taking these hits over and over.
Julia Meek
And have that safety net sort of permanently in place.
Tomi Cardin
Not just for the clients, but for us, the ones that continue to show up day after day.
Julia Meek
Great point, and now, this last year has been a hard one in so many ways, especially for nonprofits and their populations, Tomi. How are you and yours faring by now? Working through it, is it hard to carry on?
Tomi Cardin
Yes, [chuckles] just being completely honest. It's never easy, but it's always worth it. Leading through the last year has been challenging. There's so much turmoil in our world, in the political landscape, the financial landscape, what the future holds. There's fear, there's a scarcity mentality, and then there's just the bottom line, where things are more expensive. Dollars don't go as far as they once did. And the support can be, you know, charitable contributions are often one of the things that take the hit first. But that doesn't mean our needs go are any less, they're actually a little greater. So, thinking outside of the box, being willing to partner and collaborate in ways that take that pressure off of organizations when they come together? If we're not trying to recreate the wheels or duplicate the services, if we can come together and share, then those dollars that people are committed to investing in us as Redemption House or our friends and partners around the community, it can go further.
Julia Meek
and the impact can be greater.
Tomi Cardin
The impact can be greater. The women's lives we serve can be impacted so much more deeply, and then we are not wearing ourselves out swimming upstream.
Julia Meek
Good luck on all of that.
Tomi Cardin
[laughs] Thank you!
Julia Meek
Now your own redemption begat this master plan, giving others their shot at it and fueling their fire, Tommy, thank you for all of that. So, how do you keep going strong? What motivates you when you're at your lowest to motivate them?
Tomi Cardin
When I think about what motivates me to keep going when it's hard, it's because they're worth it. Every woman that walks through that front door deserves someone to fight for her. And no one told me that it was going to be easy to step into someone else's storm. I never anticipated it would be easy. And as much as I get to celebrate the good times, and there's attention and notoriety that come with that, and the celebration, which is wonderful. But that is no more mine to share than someone's failing. I trust their abilities to make their own decisions, and I do my best to educate them on the consequences, both good and bad. No one could force me to do it when I didn't want to get clean, when I didn't want to change my life. But as soon as somebody believed in me and helped me measure it out, count the cost of these decisions. I'm going to love you no matter what, but I need you to choose for yourself this day what you will have. Life or death, blessing or cursing, light or dark. It's up to you. If you choose light, this is the direction you're gonna go. If you choose not, then these are the consequences you're gonna face. And if I say the truth in as loving a way as possible, as I can, to each person that we get to serve and be a part of, then I can go to bed knowing that I did all that depended on me, and I can wake up the next day with strength to do it all over again. Some days are harder than others, some days are more amazing than others, but every day is worth it. So, when it gets hard, I just remind myself that tomorrow will be a new morning, a fresh start, and I really do pray that the seeds that I plant this day will take root and grow up in the days to come.
Julia Meek
Tomi Cardin is founder and CEO of Redemption House. Thank you for sharing your story of this amazingly good work that you do, Tommy. Continued blessings on that journey.
Tomi Cardin
Thank you so much.
Tomi Cardin: When I think about what motivates me to keep going when it's hard, it's because they're worth it.
Every woman that walks through that front door deserves someone to fight for her. And no one told me that it was going to be easy to step into someone else's storm.
I never anticipated it would be easy. And as much as I get to celebrate the good times, and there's attention and notoriety that come with that, and the celebration, which is wonderful.
But that is no more mine to share than someone's failing. I trust their abilities to make their own decisions, and I do my best to educate them on the consequences, both good and bad.
No one could force me to do it when I didn't want to get clean, when I didn't want to change my life. But as soon as somebody believed in me and helped me measure it out, count the cost of these decisions.
I'm going to love you no matter what, but I need you to choose for yourself this day what you will have. Life or death, blessing or cursing, light or dark. It's up to you.
If you choose light, this is the direction you're gonna go. If you choose not, then these are the consequences you're gonna face.
And if I say the truth in as loving a way as possible, as I can, to each person that we get to serve and be a part of, then I can go to bed knowing that I did all that depended on me, and I can wake up the next day with strength to do it all over again.
Some days are harder than others, some days are more amazing than others, but every day is worth it.
So, when it gets hard, I just remind myself that tomorrow will be a new morning, a fresh start, and I really do pray that the seeds that I plant this day will take root and grow up in the days to come.
Julia Meek: Tomi Cardin is founder and CEO of Redemption House. Thank you for sharing your story of this amazingly good work that you do, Tommy. Continued blessings on that journey.
Tomi Cardin: Thank you so much.
