Redefining what a freedom practice looks like
Benevolence Farm’s mission is to cultivate leadership, promote sustainable livelihoods, and create structural change with people impacted by the criminal legal system across North Carolina.
Since 2016, Benevolence Farm has been redefining what a freedom practice can look like in rural communities. From our 13-acre property in Graham, North Carolina, we work alongside women and gender expansive people of all conviction types who come from towns, cities, and rural communities across the state. Through a holistic model that integrates transitional housing, living-wage employment, mental and emotional wellbeing, family reunification, resource navigation, and advocacy, women and gender expansive people rebuild relational, practical, emotional, and political skills that carceral systems often damage or distort.
Read more ↓We view our space as a learning community. Together, residents are navigating how to share space, resolve conflict, tell their own story from a position that is reparative rather than punitive or shaming, ask for help, make decisions, build trust, and live without a mindset of surveillance, punishment, and scarcity. Because nearly every resident returns to a North Carolina community of their choice, the impact of our work extends far beyond Alamance County.
Our residents not only inform and critique our programming, but our advocacy. Residents and alumni reveal patterns of what is needed as people return from prison. Benevolence Farm co-creates a response that informs policy, narrative, and our very own community-based services. These responses then ultimately guide our coalitional work, state legislative advocacy, and public-facing educational efforts.
As a result, Benevolence Farm has become a respected voice in statewide conversations about reentry, partnering with coalitions, legislators, state agencies, nonprofit organizations, and community leaders to advance practical, effective solutions around housing, driver's license restoration, employment, SNAP/food access, and other barriers that prevent a successful return home. We believe the people closest to these challenges should help shape the policies designed to solve them.
Our model has produced measurable results, including a recidivism rate of approximately 15 percent compared to a national average of roughly 40 percent. Today, women and gender expansive people are referred to Benevolence Farm by prison staff, parole officers, community partners, their families, and most importantly, our own alumni.
