Freedom Life Ministries

Over 3,208 services were provided to the 324 justice involved men and women served in 2024-25. These services ranged from services such as food, clothing, hygiene, required legal documentation such as S.S. Card and Driver's License, transitional housing, rent support, housing deposits, transportation, and support groups, to services such as pastoral counseling, meds and medical health assistance, mental health assistance, substance use disorder support, connecting individuals to treatment, rehab, probation assistance, DSS Child Services, McDowell Tech classes, job training, NC Works classes, etc.

- 44,000 miles of transportation for Freedom Life clients were provided. - We continued to operate men's and women's transition housing where we provided beds to 54 men and women. - Facilitated over 150 men's and women's support groups. - Supported 4 staff in pursuing CADC credentialing. - Provided Freedom Life office space, rent free, for other mental health and substance use disorder agencies to use. - Served the needs of 100 Social Security clients on disability through Blue Ridge Community Care services, a subsidiary of Freedom Life.

Freedom Life, in partnership with the North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections, was able to successfully launch our Prison Pre-release Program. In this first year of the program, we have worked with 20 men from McDowell, Avery, and Yancey counties. 11 of the men are from McDowell. We are already seeing more men reaching out to be part of the program.

Freedom Life has continued to work with and provide support for the McDowell Partnership for Substance Awareness. - Trees have been cleared on the land where the long-term transitional apartments will be built. We are expecting major progress on this project in 2025-2026. - On a regional level, Freedom Life is now seeking grants and other funding sources to bring much more resource development funding into McDowell, Avery, and Yancey counties. This funding will cover short- and long-term transition housing development, permanent housing development, continued community development, supportive services development, etc. - Freedom Life along with all other agencies, businesses, community organizations, families, and individuals in Western North Carolina was impacted by Hurricane Helene. We made sure the current clients we had were taken care of. We had staff and clients volunteering within the community to try to help. We raised funding to help within the community. Because of the huge and wonderful amount of support and supplies that poured into our county, the needs of clients had many other sources to turn to. This made it easier to meet the needs of many more than just our clients. Our client numbers did drop in the months following Helene. However, people reaching out for help is starting to pick up as Hurricane Recovery moves forward. Programming initiatives, such as our at risk student program have been delayed because of recovery priorities and organizational adjustments.