Friend,
How are you doing? Like many of y’all, we are braving the heat and trying to keep the garden protected from the weeds and the birds. There hasn’t been much time to slow down with everything that’s been happening at Benevolence Farm!
We’ve spent the last few weeks brainstorming a more organized and thorough way to communicate all we do at the Farm without writing a book each time. We’re testing out a new format for these newsletters to improve your experience as a reader and supporter!
If you have any feedback on how to improve the format or the content of our news to you, please reply and let us know how we can make this experience better for you.
Thank you for your long-time support of second chances!
With gratitude,
Kristen Powers (she/her/ella)
Executive Director
On The Farm
A Visit From Congresswoman Valerie Foushee
Earlier this month, we were honored to host Congresswoman Valerie Foushee at Benevolence Farm. After providing a tour and braving the rain, we discussed the challenges of both running a non-profit in a rural community while also highlighting the unique barriers formerly incarcerated women face as they return home. We discussed the very real challenges of affordable housing as well as the ongoing SNAP bans for people with certain drug convictions, which affect many of the women we serve.
At the end of the visit, Representative Foushee and her team spent some time shopping our body care and candle products to take back to Washington D.C. with them. No surprise — the muscle rub was a fan favorite.
Thank you to the Congresswoman for spending part of her August recess with Benevolence Farm!
Peak Season 🌼
We’ve been busy harvesting herbs and flowers around the clock as the summer winds down. The herbs and flowers are dried in our drying room, which was made possible thanks to a grant from Farm Credit of North Carolina. Once dried, the herbs and flowers are vaccuum sealed until they are needed for our body care and candle products.
The blueberries and cucumbers provided an abundant harvest this year, with all produce going to the residents.
If you follow us on Instagram, you’ve likely seen how obsessed we are with the Flower Balm candles, which are only available as long as our flower harvest lasts. Don’t miss out on this year’s offerings, which include nasturtium and California poppy flowers.
Our Wins 🙌🏼
We believe there is no such thing as a “small win” and that everyone deserves a little celebration. Here are our “Resident Win” highlight reel from the summer:
- We welcomed two new residents to our 307 House in Burlington. We are officially at capacity at both locations.
- LC earned her Peer Support Specialist Certificate and secured a full-time job with a local mental health and substance use agency to spearhead a new community mental health program.
- AW obtained her driver’s license.
- CD advocated for herself as a mother while she navigates the child reunification process with the Department of Social Services.
The Challenges 🚧
On the flip side, we want to be transparent too about the challenges we face as a small rural non-profit for and by formerly incarcerated women.
Housing 🏠:
We are now seeing more rental agencies asking applicants to earn 4x the rent to even qualify. For context, that’s $4,800 expected monthly income or 3.8x what an individual working full-time at North Carolina minimum wage is making.
Additionally, more rental agencies are asking for application fees before they’ll even pull a background check. Many of the folks we work with are burning through their savings to basically be denied at the next step because of their criminal record.
To remedy this as best as we can, we are surveying people with criminal records across Alamance County to better understand their experience and see how we can better advocate for ourselves. Secondly, we are working to expand the number of rental agencies open to housing people with records.
Ultimately, these are short term solutions to secure safe and secure housing for all. We will also continue to advocate for both cultural and political change to ensure everyone has a place to call home at the end of the day.
IN THE COMMUNITY
Benevolence Farm Takes on Los Angeles 🌎
For the third year in a row, Benevolence Farm attended A New Way of Life‘s SAFE House Training in Los Angeles. This organization is founded by Susan Burton.
This year, both Katie and Mona were able to attend to represent the perspectives of former residents.
We are longtime fans of Susan, a formerly incarcerated woman herself who started the country’s first trauma-informed reentry housing for women over 25 years ago. Her book is required reading for all staff and interns. We learned so much from her experience along with the other formerly incarcerated women in the room.
Bonding Families 💞
This past May, Mona joined our team full-time thanks to the generous support of a funding partner. She’s still crushing it in the workshop where she is lovingly referred to as our Candle Scientist. (Keep an eye out for new sampler candles curated by Mona herself.)
Mona’s other role is Family Reunification Advocate. Mona describes this role as her new life’s work after experiencing family separation firsthand. After 4.5 years of incarceration —a charge that resulted from protecting one of her own children — Mona reunited with her son last year and her two daughters (pictured below) this summer.
(Note: To learn more about the punishment of mothers, check out these articles here and here – please take care while reading.)
Her new project, Bonding Families, is a support group for families harmed by the criminal legal system. This gathering, held in Burlington on the second Tuesday of the month, is a space for families to process their losses and determine how they can support one another’s needs, as well as their incarcerated loved ones, together in community.
If you know of someone in North Carolina experiencing family separation because of incarceration and wants a community of support, please have them connect to Mona by e-mailing mona@benevolencefarm.org.
More to come for Mona! For now, we are joining her in celebrating her daughters’ return to their mother. Staff had a blast meeting her kids on the Farm and all of us received new nicknames, personally chosen by each of the children. We also had the honor of witnessing the younger one’s first ever backflip.
Congratulations, Mona. Nothing stops a momma on a mission.
Freedom Dreaming
The term “Freedom Dreams” was coined by Professor Robin D.G. Kelley. This Black Liberation approach invites us to “create the world we dream of by, first, visualizing the future we want to live in, and second, determining the actions that will lead us there.”
We’re dedicating the “Freedom Dreaming” section to the content in our toolbox that helps us imagine a world without prisons and the steps we take to build that world. We invite you to join us in this imagining and let us know what your world of safety and well-being looks like.
What We’re Listening To: One Million Experiments (AirGo Radio)
What We’re Reading: Are Prisons Obsolete? (Angela Davis)
Tools We Can Use: Brave Sensors – In an ongoing effort to recognize substance use disorder as a medical diagnosis and not a crime, we want to uplift our friends creating tools that offer us space to practice harm reduction. If you own or manage a space with a public restroom, check out these sensors that can identify a potential overdose before it’s too late.
And as always, we should all carry Narcan like we carry Tylenol. You can pick up a Narcan kit or get a Narcan training for your workplace via your local Health Department.
