I have with me Nora Vondrell today. How long have you been involved with Daybreak and how did you get connected with us?
My bachelor’s degree is in social work. I’m a Wright State University grad, and my first job out of college was working for Montgomery County Children Services. I had a client at Daybreak and got to know Daybreak through her.
It was while I was working with that client that the leadership at Daybreak asked if I’d be interested in coming and working for Daybreak as a social worker. And so that is how I got to know Daybreak. That was in 1995.
And it was at Daybreak that I really started looking at management as a career.
I knew I wanted to be in the human and social services field, obviously, since my degree was in it.
I started looking at management as a way to affect change on more of a macro level. In social work, it’s usually one-on-one or—with my experience at Daybreak, I was doing individual, group and family therapy under a clinical staff.
But I wanted to make changes on more of a macro level. So, I went and went and sought additional education. I received my master’s in public administration from the University of Dayton, and I applied for and was accepted as the shelter manager at Daybreak.
Congratulations! That’s awesome!
Thank you. So, that was my first foray into nonprofit management. I was the shelter manager, then I became the shelter director, then I became the director of programs. When I left, I was the associate director under Linda Kramer.
Now fast forward several decades later and I am the executive director for the Charles D. Berry Foundation and the Berry Family Foundation, both of which are partners with Daybreak.
It’s kind of a full circle moment where instead of doing the individual group and family therapy being there working with the young people, now I can support those who are doing that really hard work. It has certainly come full circle and been something of which I’m very proud.
We are very proud to be grant recipients and partners doing this work in the community and very thankful for the support from the foundations and from individuals like you.
Okay, so you’ve been very involved over the years. How have you seen Daybreak change since you first became acquainted with the work that they do back when you first met them in your job with Children Services?
Sure. Back in ‘95 when I started at Daybreak, we were in the house at Wayne Ave. which you all no longer even own and we were just starting to look as a leadership team towards the end of my time with Daybreak at the new facility. Knowing that we had reached capacity at the time I was there, our maximum capacity in the shelter part was eight girls or eight boys. You could have a Max of 16.
But our max was really limited to gender because they were in half of the building that we were in. And our transitional housing program was on the 2nd floor. The program I think was a max of two or three. There weren’t very many.
We had the Drop-In Center which we called the Bridge. That was a building that we had purchased right next to the old shelter, I believe now it’s a coffee shop.
You look at Daybreak now and the capacity is so much larger!
The need is still so huge, greater than you all can even meet sometimes from my understanding.
Certainly, back in 1995 through 2002, which is when I left, the capacity was small. We worked a lot with partners to try to wrap our young people with support.
Yeah, definitely. Daybreak had very humble beginnings from what I’ve heard from staff and clients from those beginning days on Wayne Ave. What would you say has surprised you the most in the time that you’ve known Daybreak?
What has surprised me the most? That’s a great question.
To be honest, I think what surprises me the most is that Daybreak has to tell its story over and over again.
That the amount of advocacy needed to maintain the services that you have, which are so critical to the community, to this segment of the population, I guess that surprises me.
It just seems, seems like such a no brainer that this is a vulnerable population, this young adult population, especially the teens, but the young adult, once they turn 18 and that family structure may not have been there to support them.
But Daybreak was there and then they turned 18 and who’s left to support these young people. So, I guess that surprises me. It feels like a no brainer.
Yeah. And that the community and that population keeps growing too. That’s a really good point that you bring up because I think they’re one of those vulnerable populations that kind of falls in between the cracks between services that are out there. And they can be very easily invisible from what it seems.
We appreciate advocates like you and everyone else out there who tells our story for us. What would you say you most enjoy about Daybreak and what we do?
Sure. It’s amazing how challenging it is having a 24-hour facility. I think when I go back now and I hear the rules and the regulations that you all are having and I think back to some of the rules and regulations that we had just to keep that population supported 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year—I think I’m always very appreciative.
I’m very appreciative of all that goes into supporting that population.
Yeah. I know back on Wayne Ave. the accommodations were somewhat different and there was less space as far as individually. I think not only keeping it running but also keeping it peaceful was probably a very big part of that skill set.
I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I used to joke that I’d rather have 16 boys than 8 girls in the house because the boys would get in arguments and they might break things, but then they could work it out.
It felt like with the girls it never ended. You would get tears, and they would work through the issues and then I swear 10 minutes later they’d be back at it again.
I think the development of boys and girls is very different at that age, where they’ve come from—the families—if they’ve had any support.
So, there could be lots of communication issues that as an adult I’m trying to be helpful, but yet really allow them to experience it and start where they’re at and not where I’m at.
That was always a challenge, especially being a social worker that was doing individual, group and family. It was a real struggle to get parental involvement. But then when you got the parents involved, you realized there was a lot of trauma the family was experiencing.
The young person was one piece of a puzzle that required a lot of steps to try and make whole.
That’s a really good point you mentioned about meeting them where they are instead of where we are. I think that can be very difficult to keep in mind, but it makes a really big difference for sure.
Absolutely.