Friend,
The end of the year is a jam packed time here at Benevolence Farm. Social enterprise holiday sales, year-end fundraising, navigating the holiday season — we are busy bees. 🐝
Over the next few weeks, you’ll see more content from us on social media and in e-mails that attempts to “wrap up” or “review” what 2023 meant to us here at Benevolence Farm.
This December (the 19th, to be specific) marks my fourth year as Director here at Benevolence Farm.
I can absolutely say it is our best year yet.
From the creation of Bonding Families to the Housing First Fund to the cementing of an incredible staff, 2023 is the year we felt ourselves getting more and more free as an organization, in addition to the freedom we witness every time somebody comes home from prison or jail.
We will do our best to capture that feeling in what we share with you between now and December 31st, but please know that you are a part of this celebration too.
Earlier this year, I attended a gathering of Southern movement leaders in Jackson, Mississippi. One day, we sat around in a circle and listened to local movement elders impart their wisdom to us as we asked all the questions we had welling up inside us as young, tired, and scared leaders doing this hard work.
One of my peers asked an elder, “In all of your years of organizing, what was your proudest moment?”
His answer: “It was truly an honor to just be one of the many.”
One of the many.
This phrase has stuck with me this entire year. Whenever I feel I am not doing enough, that Benevolence Farm is not doing enough, I remember that it’s not up to one of us to do it all. It is not fair. It is not compassionate. It is not possible to do this alone.
And I want to take a moment to thank all of you for being one of the many in this journey towards liberation. Thank you for being a part of the Benevolence Farm community as we navigate our way through the very real challenges a small rural non-profit faces with big dreams for our collective freedom.
This holiday season, I hope you take a moment to sit with the fact that you are one of the many that made real, tangible changes in 2023.
And for you, I am thankful.
With that, let’s see what we have in store for our last “monthly newsletter” of the year.
With gratitude,
Kristen Powers
one of the many
