“Year Ends, Life Begins,” Event Raises Funds for Worthy Women Inc.

 Photos of "Year Ends, Life Begins," event can be seen here!

Although the December day was chilly outside, the warmth of love and compassion filled the inside of the Worthy Women Recovery Home and poured out into the cold. The house is located at 1001 Maple Avenue, on the corner of Madison Street and Maple Avenue in downtown La Porte.

Formed in 2008, Worthy Recovery Inc. is a nonprofit organization aimed towards helping recovering female addicts. Sonshine Troche, founder of the organization, believes in making a difference in the community. For this reason, Worthy Recovery Inc. purchased a building on September 7, 2011, and they have been working relentlessly ever since to build a safe, sober, and structured home for non-violent females coming out of the La Porte County Jail who struggle with addiction issues.

"There are no transitional homes in the community for women," Troche said. "The one that's in Michigan City is a federal transitional house, and the Dunes House in Michigan City holds about 8 men and is an AA program, so that's good. But there's no transitional home for women to go to, and we have about 1,300-1,400 of them that get locked up in the jail over here, so this is what we're doing about it."

Troche, who was helping in the jail doing cognitive behavior programs, began to see the same women coming back over and over again. She realized that something needed to be done to help them, and, with a 23-year background in construction, she spearheaded the endeavor. She joined up with Pat Graham, who is in charge of the building committee. At its last inspection, La Porte's building inspector Chuck Collins said that everything is "above and beyond," and Sonshine and Pat hope to have the house completely finished by spring 2015.

"We've got a major issue in La Porte with heroin," Graham shared. "I really want to have a safer, better community, so that we can grow and prosper. We want to teach young women about the Lord and give them a chance to turn their lives around, especially with their children. We want to stop the addiction before it affects another generation."

The construction of the house has found an immense amount of support from the community.

Troche said, "Tonn and Blank started out with the blueprints. They donated all of that for us and sent the plans downstate to the Department of Homeland Securities. And then Jean Jonas and Jonas Construction stepped up in a huge way, saving us almost $19,000. Goodman Plumbing has been out here and donated close to $16,000-17,000 worth of labor. Window World of Northwest Indiana saved us about $6,000 on our windows. A lot of small companies have helped as well. Over 340 volunteers now have pitched in to help us out. Even just in terms of families who donate $10 a month or $50 a month, whatever they can. The big thing that has made this mission operate on a day to day basis as we're finishing this home is actually the community."

Calling out to the community, Troche, along with Trudy Menke, put together the event called "Year Ends, Life Begins," an effort to raise $5,000 for the house to match that of an anonymous donor willing to pay up to $5,000 for the house's refrigerator.

Generous community donations included those of Representative Tom Dermody with $1,000, and La Porte Savings Bank and Parkinson and Hinton Inc. with $500 each.

The event included coffee, candy from Captain Ed's, and ornaments which people could purchase for a small donation, write their names on, and place on a tree. Tours around the house-to-be were given, and Santa even made an appearance.

New Prairie High School senior Amanda Beutner, donned in elf attire, shared, "Sonshine helps out the community, and working with her has opened my eyes to realizing the importance the community needs to fight the drug problems we have around here. She's been great with getting more involved with the younger people of the community to help make them more aware as well."

Some of these young people Troche helps are the girls in La Porte High School's Girl Reserves (GR) group. The community service group based on women empowerment has been helping WWRH for the past three years. GR leader Ingrid Voelker stopped by "Year Ends, Life Begins" to make a donation from both herself and from GR.

She stated, "We want to help Worthy Women Recovery Home get up and running so we can save and empower women, as GR does."

"It's the first recovery home," said Troche, "But I'm sure it's not going to be the last. Once we've got this one done, I think people are going to see that God has been faithful to us and that we've been faithful as well, and we are going to keep moving forward to help take a big chunk of addiction issues out of this community and bring some healing to it."

Lori Bagley, a helper of WWRH, shared, "I believe that everybody makes mistakes and everybody needs a second chance. A lot of people don't know how good life can be so we're here to show them how."

Troche added, "If interested, go to worthyrecovery.org and donate there. We are definitely looking for monthly partnerships, so even if people can give $10 a month they can do that through PayPal online or they can send a check or they can go to their bank and they can set it up like that. They can call me if they have any questions at 219-405-7006 and help us to get the operational money that we need to make sure that, when we open the home in spring, 14 women at a time will have a safe, secure, and structured place to live."