Daily Inspiration: Meet DiAnna Jordan

Today we’d like to introduce you to DiAnna Jordan from the North Carolina Rock Autism Music Festival

Hi DiAnna , thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
The North Carolina Rock Autism Music Festival was born in 2017 when my husband Daniel came to me with the idea that he wanted to do “something for families like ours.” Being parents of a little boy named Jagger who has Autism made us no strangers to the difficulty of accessing resources and support. Daniel had been playing in a local band for a few years, so naturally, a music festival was a fantastic idea. We initially thought it would be just something we did once and see how it went. And then it grew. Our first year it poured the entire time, our community still came out and we raised around $10,000. Each year it we were able to raise more, and we learned how to better navigate the event while adding more moving parts, fixing mistakes and building a bigger team of volunteers. Even after a location change the festival has blossomed and continued to receive unbelievable support from our wonderful community. To date we have raised over $100,000 for Autism related nonprofits, more specifically, the Autism Society of North Carolina. This year is our first year on our own. We finally decided to pull the trigger and become our own nonprofit so the funds raised could be allocated for families and programs right here in Northeast North Carolina where resources are few. Along with ALL Inclusive of North Carolina, a special needs family support group we started in 2019, we rested the festival as a subsidiary under Grassroots 252, our mothership so to speak. This will allow us to start new programs to support the community as we are able.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has not been smooth at all. LOL All of our volunteers, including ourselves put the festival together in our “spare time.” We have a wonderful team that really rocks it out not only the day of but weeks before, they really know what to do and make it run as smoothly as an event of this size can. Needless to say it has become a year-round job. We start planning one month after the festival is over for the next year. Our core team is made up of four people that do much of the planning: Tiffany Anderson, Britton Overton, my husband Daniel Jordan, and myself. We all really have to double down on a lot of tasks. I think our location change was probably the biggest struggle because we had it nailed down and were perfecting it, but last year we had to switch locations and re-invent our entire approach. Then we had a last-minute disaster and had to reroute in less than a week. It was unbelievable the way the community, business owners, and city pulled together to help us and we raised another $27,000. We have been so blessed.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Now as a family of four with our little fireball Haevyn in tow, our goal is to continue our journey with our family, friends, and community to continue to advocate, educate, and support other individuals and families in our area.
We are so proud of this community and how awesome they have been willing to learn and grow with us. Families learning to navigate Autism in our community have said how amazing it is seeing everyone come out for the cause and we too have felt a little less isolated seeing them all come out to support the festival. Hopefully they take that experience with them and share the importance of inclusivity and community. Who knows, maybe in the future we will be able to start Rock Autism Festivals in other states!

Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
My advice for those starting out is prepare for rain, find someone that knows more than you/ can fill the gap in your weaknesses, expect to disagree with your team, and breathe the day of. What happens will happen, it is about preparation not control. You will never control everything, you can only prepare for what you THINK may happen. And lastly, it is okay to let them see you sweat, it means you care about what you are doing!

Contact Info:

• Facebook: facebook.com/NCRockAutism/

Image Credits
Beverly Pritchett, Naomi Michelle, Gregory Hardison, Dorothy Brewster