Amani Family Services awarded Meg Distler, Executive Director of the St. Joseph Community Health Foundation, the 2025 Amani Ambassador of the Year Award at the Welcoming Fort Wayne Awards on September 19. The honor recognized her deep commitment to welcoming immigrants and refugees, as well as her active support of Amani’s mission to strengthen families and promote community well-being in Fort Wayne.

Through her leadership, the St. Joe Foundation has continued the legacy work of the Catholic sisters, the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, including welcoming immigrants and refugees to the Fort Wayne community. In 2010, this led to the establishment of a Community Resource Center for Refugees, which provided over 25,000 services to the estimated 5,000+ local Burmese refugees.

Meg has also been instrumental in helping to launch numerous immigration welcoming programs. This has included three decades of training medical and community interpreters, including helping to provide seed funding for the Language Services Network and the Language Access Lab. In 2023, she collaborated with local non-profit leaders and the Indiana University Health Foundation to launch the Burmese Health Collaborative, a three-year, $1 million program, enabling local agencies to help Burmese nationals build stronger, healthier lives in our community.

At the same ceremony, the Allen County Board of Commissioners announced that Allen County is the first county in the State of Indiana to earn the designation “Certified Welcoming” from the national organization Welcoming America. Allen County joins only 31 other

counties and municipalities across the country to earn the prestigious distinction. Read how this benefits Allen County.