Megan Reed, Campus Carrier News Editor
The Rev. Becca Stevens, founder of the Magdalene program and Thistle Farms, visited Berry on Feb. 17 to speak about the importance of social enterprise and social justice.
The Magdalene program, based in Nashville, Tenn., is a residential program for women who have survived lives of prostitution, addiction, trafficking and homelessness. Women who complete the two-year program are provided housing, food, medical care, therapy and job training while living in one of six houses in Nashville with other women who have had similar experiences. Upon graduating from the program, many women are then employed by Thistle Farms, the natural body care company which Stevens founded to provide women from the Magdalene program with job experience.
About 150 women have graduated from the Magdalene program since it was founded in 1997, and 72 percent of women who join Magdalene are clean and sober two and a half years after joining, Stevens said.
Stevens, an Episcopal priest, said she created Magdalene as a “sanctuary for women” to provide a long-term solution for issues women in Nashville and all over the country were facing.
“We started with the mission that we wanted to be a witness to the truth that love is the most powerful force for social change in the world,” Stevens said. “Twenty years later, I believe it now more than ever.”
Shana Goodwin, a graduate of the program who now works in sales for Thistle Farms, also spoke. She said she heard about Magdalene from other women she met in jail and on the streets and knew the program could help her.
“[Magdalene] has given me a life, something I’ve never had before, and a family and a belonging and a community,” Goodwin said. “Everything I was looking for in the streets and couldn’t find.”
In addition to the six houses in Nashville, the Magdalene program has helped start and created partnerships with about 10 other similar residential programs in cities such as New Orleans, La. and St. Louis, Mo.
Magdalene does not receive funding from the state or federal government, but rather relies on private donations and revenue from selling Thistle Farm products. While Thistle Farms does help fund the program, it also provides women from Magdalene with economic independence.
“They learn their way around a workplace,” Stevens said. “For some of the women that come, they’ve never had a job before.”
Stevens said working at Thistle Farms gives the women involved the opportunity to learn about business and the workforce in a cooperative environment.
Stevens’ lecture was sponsored by the Bonner Center, the Campbell School of Business, the Chaplain’s Office and the women’s studies department.
Junior JC Albritton, a Bonner scholar who helped organize Stevens’ visit to Berry, said he thought Stevens’ mission aligned with Berry’s mission of serving others. Thistle Farms, he said, is a “meeting of a good business model and giving unto others.”
Stevens said she was “glad to be starting a relationship with Berry College.”