The City of Fort Wayne disbursed its first round of Opioid Settlement Fund grants in November. WBOI’s Ella Abbott reports the grants went to community organizations focused on all affected by the opioid crisis, and on all pathways to recovery.
Staff members with Project.ME hand out free meals during the lunch hour every Tuesday at the corner of Coliseum and Goshen. On this particular Tuesday, a group spots the organization's branded van from the balcony and makes their way downstairs, greeting staff members like old friends.
The location is strategic — it’s right across from a bus station and in the center of several low-cost hotels off the highway.
“Thank you, guys, every Tuesday, I appreciate you," one man said, as he headed back to his hotel room with two lunches — one for him and one for his wife.
Along with lunch, they offer those who come find the branded van supplies like socks and hygiene items. They also give out fresh needles, Narcan or fentanyl testing strips, if requested. It’s all part of the organization’s focus on harm reduction.
Aisha Diss founded Project.ME nearly seven years ago, building the outreach and recovery programs from her own experience with substance use.
“I found myself serving time in the Indiana Department of Corrections and because I had a short time to serve, there wasn’t a lot of programming to get into," she said. "In lieu of that, I just set some goals for myself cause at that point I had been involved in the criminal legal system for over a decade, using substances and not really knowing how to recover.”
Diss said a lot of the traditional pathways to recovery didn’t feel right for her, because she’d been court mandated to do them for so long.
"So, choosing my own recovery looked like therapy and going to college and just getting the things in place that made sense for me as I was stabilizing," she said.
Project.ME follows that same idea, that traditional pathways may not be the best or most effective way to recovery for some people. Diss said the goal at Project.ME is to come alongside someone at any stage of their recovery and offer support and services they may otherwise not have access to.
"Our goal with that is meaningful engagement with people who use drugs, because that is a big gap in services that exist," she said. "Where I think as a society, in a pretty big way, we believe that people should ‘choose’ recovery – and I say that with air quotes – because you know in a lot of cases recovery equals abstinence. That’s not necessarily true. People can enter into recovery and still be using substances and people get to define that for themselves.”
That means supporting people even in their active addictions, by offering ways to mitigate risk.
“We get kind of a hard rap for harm reduction," Diss said. "So, we’re a full harm reduction peer support organization. Which, for us, what that means is we do support all pathways of recovery. We support harm reduction as a pathway.”
She said substance use disorder is a spectrum; from active, chaotic use to long-term abstinence-based recovery. Diss said it’s Project.ME’s job to support people on either end of the spectrum.
The organization was one of the grantees in the City of Fort Wayne’s first round of Opioid Settlement Fund grants, receiving $100,000 that will go to various programming, including free community Naloxone trainings.
It will also help offset the loss of funds coming from the state, Diss said.
“So, on average, like maybe a month we spend anywhere from $3-5,000 on all the supplies that we offer and this year annually our contract from the state reduced to $5000 for supplies for the whole year," she said.
But it’s not all just going towards programs Project.ME has already been offering. Diss said they’ll also be using a portion of the funds to create housing scholarships for those either looking for independent housing who need assistance with down payments or those trying to secure beds in recovery residences.
“With all the other tangible resources and stuff we have, we’ve just never had funds to help with housing," she said. "So that’s been a little bit of a gamechanger.”
Diss wants people to understand that while Project.ME is focused on harm reduction, they don’t just let people walk out of the door without knowing about paths to recovery.
“If somebody says ‘you know what? I really don’t want to live like this anymore. I would like to seek out inpatient treatment.’ We definitely help them navigate that," she said. "And while people are making the decision to continue using drugs, we believe that they deserve dignified support just like anybody else does.”
That harm reduction principle is also backed by a proven track record of success. Naloxone distribution and syringe exchange programs expanding in Indiana over the past several years have contributed to a 20 percent drop in overdose deaths in the state.
According to data from the Fort Wayne Police Department, Allen County saw a 12 percent decrease in fatal overdoses from 2024 to 2025 and a 23 percent drop in non-fatal overdoses.
The Recovery Cafe, which also received $100,000 from the city, also takes a harm reduction forward approach to recovery. Executive director Ryan Marsden said it's about creating a community and a safe place for a person to go to learn about a substance-free life.
"The key part about that to me is that somebody wouldn’t come to our space if they weren’t interested or at least curious about what a life in recovery looks like," he said.
Members of the cafe come in for dinner, which is offered every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Before dinner, staff members give announcements about upcoming events or housekeeping items, before they go around the room and invite members to say some of the things they’re grateful for.
"I'm grateful for family, community, sobriety," said one member of the cafe.
Marsden also had his own experience with substance use disorder before he founded the Cafe.
"During my own recovery of all the stigma and all the different pathways to recovery that I attempted, some of those pathways obviously weren’t for me and I felt like may have even been a little bit harmful to myself," he said. "The key reason that I wanted to create the cafe was to be inclusive and low barrier.”
They don’t require 100 percent abstinence from members of the Cafe, they only require that everyone demonstrates safe behavior that doesn’t put anyone else inside the space at risk.
Marsden also talks a lot about stigma and how it can keep people from seeking out treatment or feeling comfortable talking about their addictions.
“This is just like any other condition or disease out there," he said. "We wouldn’t judge someone for having cancer or diabetes.”
There are also several ways substance use can intersect with other struggles people may be experiencing; mental health issues, poverty and homelessness are common in recovery communities. But, there’s another more complicated one; Grief.
“It’s different in the fact that people are often grieving for their family member or those who are struggling long before a potential overdose situation even happens," Marsden said.
He said it was the same for him when he was in his active addiction.
"My family was fully prepared for the fact that I could pass away at any given time," he said. "So, there’s grief before, there’s grief during the recovery process.”
Marsden said that opioids especially change people’s behaviors very quickly. Family members may feel like they’re losing or have lost their loved ones long before an overdose occurs.
And for those in recovery, they can often be grieving the life they had before their substance use.
"People do things they wouldn’t do to obtain these substances, including spending all their money," Marsden said. "There’s a lot of job loss, there’s familial destruction, there’s financial destruction.”
Stillwater Hospice specializes in grief counselling. They received a $25,000 grant from the Opioid Settlement Funds, which they have been putting towards expanding services aimed at those grieving a loved one lost due to substance use.
Laura Gerrero is the Bereavement Coordinator for Stillwater. She said grief due to substance use disorder loss can be very unique.
“And we have individuals that struggle with increased feelings of guilt, that maybe they didn’t do enough to help their loved one or maybe they could have done something to prevent the loss," she said. "Sometimes we have individuals that feel guilt because they also are feeling a sense of relief, just due to maybe all the challenges or changes in relationship that they had with their loved one while they were using.”
And that same stigma that can keep those struggling from getting into recovery, can also stall the grieving process for those going through a loss.
“They can also have an increased feeling of shame, isolation and that kinda goes back to this type of loss being a disenfranchised grief where they can’t really feel like it’s socially accepted or can be openly mourned," Guerrero said.
Stillwater utilizes Alan Wolfelt’s companion model of bereavement, which encourages non-judgementally meeting people where they are in their grieving process and acting as a guide, while viewing them as an expert in their own grief.
They also utilize strategies outside of talk therapy for helping someone move through their grief; Movement therapies like dance or restorative yoga.
"Going back to stigma, someone maybe doesn’t feel as comfortable talking about their loss, but might feel more comfortable writing about it, or doing one of our programs that’s more geared towards processing through your body and how grief impacts us physically," Guerrero said.
She said it's also important to be open about the types of people who are impacted by overdose loss.
"Unfortunately, this can happen to anyone," Guerrero said. "We see clients from all different kinds of spiritual, cultural, religious, socioeconomical status. It’s really across the board.”
Diss praised the approach the city has taken to handing out the funds and encourages anyone who thinks their work may intersect to apply.
“There are communities even that surround us that the funds are going towards law enforcement and things like that," she said. "And while, I guess, I can understand a little bit the rationale, it’s a little harder in my head to rationalize that. Because it should really be the services that are there to support people and not create barriers or be punitive.”
Marsden credited the organizations continuing to expand harm reduction and working to combat the stigma around substance use disorders for the declines in both fatal and non-fatal overdoses.
“So, we want to continue doing what works," he said. "We want to continue doing a better job.”
The city of Fort Wayne held their second round of grant applications at the beginning of this year and expect to do so every six months for the foreseeable future.
We should disclose Stillwater Hospice is a financial supporter of WBOI.
