Music for a Mission will be a concert dedicated to supporting YWCA Northeast Indiana’s addiction recovery program for women. Music for a Mission pairs live performances from local musicians with real stories from YWCA's addiction recovery program graduates, highlighting the organization’s wraparound approach to healing. The event celebrates resilience while raising funds for housing, therapy, and essential services for women overcoming addiction.
Event Information:
Music for a Mission is a family-friendly event
Date: Friday, September 18th
Time: Doors open at 6:00pm
Location: Brotherhood Mutual: 6400 Brotherhood Way # 2227, Fort Wayne, IN 46825
Find tickets and more information at ywcanein.org.
WBOI's Brianna Datta-Barrow explores YWCA Northeast Indiana's addiction recovery program, the barriers women face after treatment, and how their Music for a Mission concert is helping support that work in a conversation with Nicole Johnson-Smith, Director of Clinical and Recovery Services, and Emily McCorkle, the organization's marketing and engagement coordinator.
Brianna Datta-Barrow: I'm joined now by two guests from YWCA Northeast Indiana. First, Nicole Johnson Smith, Director of Clinical and Recovery Services, who oversees their Residential Addiction Recovery Program, which is a program that is changing lives across six counties here in Northeast Indiana. We're also joined by the organization's marketing and engagement coordinator, Emily McCorkle, who's helping bring this new event, Music for a Mission, to life. Thank you so much for being here.
Nicole Johnson-Smith: Thank you.
Emily McCorkle: Yep. Thank you, Bri.
Brianna Datta-Barrow: So, for listeners who may not be familiar with it, can you tell us about YWCA Northeast Indiana's residential addiction recovery program and about the women that it serves?
Nicole Johnson-Smith: Our residential recovery program houses women and children. We have referral sources through Recovery Works and DCS, and we work closely with the judicial system. Our program consists of three phases. Individuals come in and they're in our clinically managed low-intensity care unit, and then they are in phase one, and that's focused on stabilization.
Once they get through that and they're stable, then we move them on to our recovery residence side, and then they phase up to phase two, which is the core treatment. So, they are active in their recovery, and then when they're almost ready to graduate the program, they are phased up to phase three, and that is focusing on maintenance and long-term recovery.
Throughout our program, they get to work with a peer recovery specialist who walks alongside them and has that lived experience that helps to support them. We also offer music therapy, which is a very unique and fun treatment modality. So that individuals who aren't great at finding the words to talk about their feelings, or knowing how to even verbalize what they're feeling, they are able to express it through music.
And then recently we have started working on a partnership for equine therapy, which is also very exciting because sometimes talk therapy is not for everybody, and so finding different approaches to meet the needs of those that we serve is very important to us. Also, we allow moms and children to come.
Our children's services advocates are able to work with moms and the kids because the kids have been through addiction too, and so it's important that both of them are supported, and that mom has that support in place to help her learn how to parent when she's no longer under the influence.
Emily McCorkle: We like to say at YWCA that we are very much about circling around folks. We have found that in both our domestic violence shelter and in our addiction recovery program, there's a lot of overlap between the two. Someone that came into the recovery program may have experienced either sexual violence or domestic violence, and now they went to jail for addiction because they were trying to cope with the circumstances that they were given.
But we at YWCA circle around them in those circumstances and provide them everything that they need…housing. We help them get a job. We help them with reuniting with their children. We help them with parenting classes, cooking classes, connecting them with other resources for when they leave. They have this, that, and the other that they can go to, and they can always come back to us.
Nicole Johnson-Smith: So, we try really hard to provide that really holistic care because if we only address the addiction and we don't address any of the other issues, we're going to see the people over and over again. We had a lady who came to us from jail and did not have her children, so she was in our program a little over a year. She was really working hard and really wanted to have stability in her life. Since she has moved out, she has her own apartment. She still has the same job, and she just got her children back and her DCS case is closed. So we are very proud of her.
Brianna Datta-Barrow: Could you talk a little bit about some of the significant barriers that your clients are facing that people may not really understand?
Nicole Johnson-Smith: One of the biggest barriers is employment. Many employers don't want to hire people who are involved in the criminal justice system or have criminal history, also transportation. Many people have been living on the streets, so they don't have the luxury of having a car or job. Yes, we have the city buses, but to find employment and use the buses, you need to. Have a job within the city limits and also near a bus station.
I would say the biggest barrier of all, though, is housing, and sometimes they're in our program a little bit longer than necessary because we're not going to discharge somebody and let them be homeless.
Brianna Datta-Barrow: The Music for a Mission event is a new event for you guys. So, what inspired it, and what can people expect when they attend?
Emily McCorkle: Yeah, so our addiction recovery program is a huge program, and it's a big part of what we do. And we don't really have any events that exist to recognize it or to fundraise for it, and so her team are also excited about the opportunity to have an event to kind of highlight their program because they put so much work into it and they do incredible things. So yeah, that's kind of how it came about.
What people can expect is that it is a family-friendly event. It will be held at Brotherhood Mutual. So, we have three different musicians that are local Fort Wayne artists who will be performing a few different genres. So, there's something for everybody there, and we also will be sharing testimony from graduates of our program in between each of the artists as kind of a transition between each one, so folks will hear the impact of what we're doing at YWCA with our addiction recovery program, while also enjoying a really cool music event.
Brianna Datta-Barrow: What are you hoping people kind of take away from the event, hearing the testimonies between the music?
Emily McCorkle: I think addiction has impacted everybody in one way or another. Same with domestic violence. I think everything that we do, we exist as an organization for a reason, and so I think hearing the testimony of the women who were willing to be vulnerable and share where they came from and where they are now will resonate with everybody in the room, in one way or another, whether you yourself have struggled with addiction or you have a family member that struggled with addiction, I think something from each of the stories is going to hit home with somebody, and that's-I mean-that's ultimately our goal as nonprofits when we put on events: is we want to reach people, we want them to understand, like we're not just doing this because we wanted to come up with some whatever. We're doing it for a reason, and these people are the reason. So we want our audience to understand why we show up to work every day and why we do what we do.
Nicole Johnson-Smith: For the ladies sharing their testimony, they are so proud to share their testimony, and they want to give back and help other people. And I think oftentimes we see individuals who are in recovery. Doesn't matter what type of recovery that they're able to make whatever their circumstances happen to be, mean something. So, overcoming what should have broken them and using it to become stronger to help people. Sometimes it's…that's the greater focus is if I had to suffer this, at least let me do something with it that's productive.
Brianna Datta-Barrow: And they are giving back. You know? That is a way of giving back…is just sharing your story. You know, you're giving hope to whoever else might be listening. So that's really beautiful.
How does attending or supporting this music for a mission event directly benefit the women that are in the addiction recovery program?
Emily McCorkle: Tickets are only $10 to attend this event. Unlike our other really big fundraiser, we want it to be super accessible to anybody in the community. All the money that is raised at this event goes directly to our recovery program. We provide everything for the folks that are in our program, three meals a day, snacks. We do different therapies with them. If they are in need of an outfit for a job interview, we supply that for them.
We give them everything that they need to get back on their feet and more if we can during the summer months, especially with kiddos, we really try and have different activities for them. We try and take them to the zoo. We try and take them to Science Central because it can become incredibly boring if you're in the shelter over the summer, and it gives the moms a little bit of a break. But it also helps with that family bonding after going through a trauma, and so all the money that is raised will help go towards that as well.
Brianna Datta-Barrow: I didn't realize the extent to how much you guys do. That's amazing. So, for listeners who may have a loved one struggling with addiction, what is one thing that you wish more people understood about the recovery?
Nicole Johnson-Smith: That it's not a straight line from point A to point B. One bad day doesn't mean that everything has been destroyed. There's hope. There's help. There are lots of people out there that want to help, and lots of facilities that are prepared to welcome anyone that is ready and shows up.
Emily McCorkle: I agree with Nicole fully. It's not linear and it doesn't look pretty by any means, but there are so many supports out there, and I think family members who might be trying to support somebody that is struggling with any sort of mental health crisis, but also specifically with substance use disorder, that it has altered their brain chemistry. It's genuinely incredibly difficult to get over an addiction, and yeah, if they slip up, give them grace and help them get back on their feet again because it's so so challenging, and unless you've been in that place, you can't possibly understand how difficult that journey is.
Yeah. So yes, tickets are only $10. You can go on our website, ywcanein.org/music for a mission, and the registration, there's a link there to the registration page. You can purchase a T-shirt on top of your registration. Those are $18, but they are. We will have one if we continue this event every year. We'll have a different T-shirt every single year. So, if you want to snatch that concert T-shirt, you can add that onto your registration. Doors open at 6o'clock on September 18 at Brotherhood Mutual. Parking is free, so you just have to come, and then the first act will start at six-thirty.
Nicole Johnson-Smith: And of course, we're going to do this every year.
Emily McCorkle: Yeah, we hope so. We're excited. The musicians that signed, so we, so we have three local Fort Wayne musicians that are performing. They each have 30-minute sets. So, we have the Train Hoppers, which is led by Matt Kelly, who's with One Lucky Guitar.
And then we have Jonah Baker, who is a singer-songwriter from here in Fort Wayne, and he has over a million followers on Spotify. Look him up if you've never heard of him before. He's awesome. He gives you chills when you listen to him sing.
And then the last one is Sarah the Librarian and the Terrible Troys. So, Sarah also performs with Naughty by Napster. If you've heard of them, it's kind of the same vibe. It's like '90s, early 2000s pop punk.
Brianna Datta-Barrow: Thank you guys so much for the work that you do for the community and for the women in the community and the families that you help. It's just genuinely so moving, and yeah, we're really looking forward to the event. Thank you.
Nicole Johnson-Smith and Emily McCorkle: Thank you.
