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A CHOICE AND A CHANCE FOR EVERY WOMAN
Our Mission: The mission is to assist, guide, and coach women to become responsible, productive, and fully self-supporting members of society with a purpose.
Our Vision: Our vision is to reduce recidivism, homelessness, and addiction. We seek to abate the vicious cycle of addiction, incarceration, deviant lifestyles, and bad choices that have negative consequences.
Birth of a Program: Her Story
Founder and Director of A Choice and A Chance Program, Vanessa Winckler (pictured right), created a haven and therapeutic milieu for women battling addiction, mental health issues, and barriers posed from being re-entry citizens. This vision was created out of Ms. Winckler's experience with addiction, mental health,and incarceration. Her story isn’t a story of a victim, but that of a survivor, a warrior, and a woman with a philanthropic heart.
Ms. Winckler has dedicated her life to helping women, who are going through what she was able to overcome. Not a victim of circumstance, but a warrior and survivor of darkness, Ms. Winckler teaches women how to self-love and overcome all barriers they encounter. Empowerment, support, and love are key components of Ms. Winckler’s philosophy.
On June 6, 2000, Ms. Winckler stopped using mood-mind-altering substances. She was incarcerated when she stop using. After being incarcerated over 13 times, she did something different. As a survivor of sexual assault, mental health,abuse, toxic relationships, Ms. Winckler did what most do, turned to a life of drugs. Her last incarceration gave her the strength to want more and to do something different. “ I went to treatment, followed direction, and I met this wonderful woman at a 12 step program who did for me what no one had done for her in a long time. She cared.” Ms. Winckler told her story over and over for the simple goal of giving back, loving, supporting and guiding women in similar circumstances.
Her mission and vision are aligned to foster peer support on the road to recovery. Ms. Winckler’s approach is to show being victimized does not equate being a victim. That mentality is counterproductive, and Ms. Winckler’s program helps to change that toxic mindset.
When she left jail the last time, she had nothing, no clothes, no personal hygiene products, or even a cigarette to help her anxiety of re-entry. However, through the love and support of a stranger, she was given those essential items, and shown a better way of thinking, and a growth mindset. When asked what further propelled her to continue on this path of positivity and wanting to give back, she stated: “I am a survivor, I do for women what that woman and God did for me. I care, and I want to help women in the recovering process.”
As a survivor of addiction, Ms. Winckler’s vision has been to create a safe haven and atmosphere for women who have struggled with addiction, mental health issues, and institutionalization.