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Benevolence Farm will help women grow after prison

Tanya Jisa is the executive director of Benevolence Farm, a program intended to help female inmates transition out of prison and back into society at large. Jisa hopes to help women and reduce recidivism rates by providing employment and temporary housing on the farm itself
Tanya Jisa is the executive director of Benevolence Farm, a program intended to help female inmates transition out of prison and back into society at large. Jisa hopes to help women and reduce recidivism rates by providing employment and temporary housing on the farm itself

Right now, the swath of land sits empty in a quiet, sparsely-populated neighborhood in Graham, about 40 minutes outside of Carrboro. But in a year, the 11-acre stretch will change the lives of a dozen women.

The land belongs to Carrboro-based Benevolence Farm, a nonprofit organization that will eventually employ up to 12 at-risk women who are leaving North Carolina prisons and transitioning back into society.

The farm’s goal is to give the women marketable skills to re-enter the workforce, anything from skills in agriculture to public relations to business management.

The project has been in the works since 2008 when its founder and executive director, Tanya Jisa, learned from a New York Times article that 1 in 100 people in the United States sits behind bars.

The article got her thinking about ways she could help to lower that number.

“I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do. What can I do to keep them from going back in?’” she said.

Jisa was new to the area when she grew to love the Carrboro Farmers’ Market and the town’s emphasis on local food.

“I thought, ‘Maybe I can work with the farm community and help these women,’” she said.

Jisa talked to local farmers and researched other farm-based services, but couldn’t find many post-incarceration programs specifically for women. She held a focus group in 2007 to discuss the idea with women who had been in prison at some point in their lives.

“We went out to a farm in Orange County and walked around on a freezing cold January morning, but no one complained about how cold it was,” Jisa said. “It immediately resonated for them. They said, ‘This is so helpful, I wish I’d had something like this when I got out.’”

Lynn Burke, who spent a couple of years in prison more than two decades ago and now helps advise the project, said most women don’t have much of a home to return to when they get out. She said there are more programs after prison for men than for women, and the available hard-labor jobs are more suited to men.

“The problem is, you’re very isolated when you’re in prison, isolated from your family. There’s no one to talk to,” Burke said. “They don’t encourage showing your feelings in prison, and there’s no place that allows women to try to heal. That’s the key, is giving people an opportunity to heal before they’re thrown back into the environment that probably sent them to prison in the first place.”

After the initial focus group, Jisa was encouraged to form the project’s first board of directors. In 2009, the project received $20,000 from a charitable fund — its first major grant.

After hearing about the farm from a friend in 2012, an Alabama man named Felix Drennen donated 11 acres of land he owned in Graham, but had no use for.

“I wanted to find somebody who could use the property in a good way for others,” he said.

Now, the farm is closer than ever to becoming a reality. Jisa said the farm will likely be up and running next year, and she and the board are in negotiations with N.C. women’s prisons on the best way to get former inmates to the farm.

Board and advisory council members held a land blessing ceremony this month to ask the land’s permission to build a farm there.

“I was standing there in the circle thinking about the connectedness of the land,” said Jaki Green, a new member of the board of directors who was present at the ceremony. “And I was thinking about how as the land sheds and we clear the land and prepare it, what we’re doing here for the women looks very much like that.”

Joanne Hershfield, chairwoman of UNC’s department of women’s and gender studies, will film the journey of the first selected group of women who work on the farm and make a documentary to premiere in 2016.

“The film will show that there are solutions to these problems, but it will also be a space where we can hear the voices of these women,” she said.

“We all have lots of friends who, at some point in their lives, made the wrong choice, and that’s the same place that these women are.”

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In planning for the farm, Jisa said the emphasis is on being good neighbors and planning extensively for sustainable farming practices.

On Feb. 1, youth volunteers will perform the first land clearing on the property.

“Women in this case are going to be farmers, they’re going to be workers, entrepreneurs, caregivers, they’re going to be breadwinners, they’re going to be bread makers,” Green said. “They’re going to do it all, in this environment that we’re trying to help them create.”

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