Magdalene Fayetteville will kick off its official fundraising campaign at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 30 inside St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 224 N. East Ave. in Fayetteville.
The campaign will help finance the purchase and renovation of a home that will serve as a healing sanctuary for women who are victims of childhood sexual abuse, addiction, human trafficking and prostitution.
The home will be modeled after the successful Magdalene program in Nashville, Tennessee, which provides 24 months of rent-free housing for 30 recovering women. The program has a 17-year track record of helping 72 percent of the women in its program become clean and sober within 36 months.
The group plans to initially bring in a resident mentor, possibly a graduate from the Magdalene program in Nashville, who will live in the house to help establish a pattern of life and peer-to-peer recovery for the 5-8 women residing in the home.
The program will connect the women to existing support services, medical providers, and educational opportunities, and will create a social enterprise business to employ the women and help develop their marketable skills. The women will work part-time in order to pay off court costs and fines, and begin to save for a life beyond Magdalene Fayetteville. The rest of their days will be structured with daily and weekly life skills activities such as budgeting and banking, meditation, yoga, book study, creative writing, job-related soft skills, resume preparation, and healthy eating.
Thursday’s event will include a presentation from Magdalene founder Becca Stevens, along with two Magdalene graduates who will discuss ways in which the Fayetteville community could benefit from a local Magdalene house.
Nashville-based, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Mike Farris will perform at the event. Farris was a founding member of the Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies and has been a solo performer since 2001. He won an Americana Music Award in 2008, a GMA Dove Award in 2010, and took home the Grammy for Best Roots Gospel Album in 2015 for his album Shine For All The People.
The evening starts at 6 p.m. with a reception. The program begins at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
For those who can’t make it, the event will be streamed online at stpaulsfay.org. Anyone wanting to contribute can donate in several ways through the Magdalene Fayetteville website.
For more information, visit lovehealsfayetteville.org.
