The core services provided by Freedom Fighting Missionaries focus on four key basic needs:
FFM provides a robust suite of core services, designed to address the multifaceted needs of their client population:
Identifications: A fundamental service involves assisting clients with obtaining vital records such as driver's licenses, birth certificates, and social security cards. These documents are indispensable for securing employment, accessing healthcare, and obtaining stable housing.
Employment: FFM partners with nonprofit organizations, corporations, local governments and vocational trade schools to provide comprehensive employment readiness classes, skills training, technology training, and crucial referrals to "second chance employers" who are willing to hire individuals with criminal records.
Healthcare: The organization facilitates access to healthcare for justice-involved individuals, including assistance with health insurance coverage. They also engage in public health initiatives, such as Narcan distribution for overdose prevention in low-income communities.
Housing and Case Management: This core service involves providing temporary and emergency housing solutions and actively assisting with permanent housing placements on a case-by-case basis. Critically, FFM offers ongoing case management services to clients even after they have secured housing, ensuring sustained stability. FFM has also developed a "Second Chance housing program" specifically designed for permanent housing after clients complete other programming services, which includes emergency housing, and transitional housing tailored for those with children. FFM partners with DreamKey Partners to prepare participants for home ownership after one year of permanent housing. FFM currently does not have the capacity to assist those who have convictions for arson, sex offenses and those who are in active addiction.
McKinney-Vento Homeless Youth Housing Program
Target Population: McKinney-Vento Children with Justice-Involved Parents/Caregivers
The FFM youth housing program is strategically designed to address a highly vulnerable and often underserved demographic: "McKinney-Vento homeless children with justice-involved parents or caregivers". This specific focus is critical because a criminal background presents a significant and persistent barrier, making renting inaccessible to many families. Research underscores this acute vulnerability: a 2023 report from the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute https://mecklenburghousingdata.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Homeless_Incarc_Report_FINAL.pdf found that individuals with a prior history of homelessness were 22 times more likely to experience homelessness after incarceration than those without, even after controlling for other factors. This highlights the compounding challenges faced by these families and the urgent need for specialized interventions that acknowledge and mitigate the impact of justice involvement on housing stability. FFM works with the McKinney-Vento staff at CMS to identify youth whose parent or caregiver's barrier to safe affordable housing is due to a previous criminal background or conviction. FFM is the community based reentry program in Charlotte to receive HUD issued housing vouchers through Inlivian ( formerly Charlotte Housing Authority) specifically for justice involved families. FFM is also a part of a rental subsidy program administered through The Foundation Of Carolina's that provides rental subsidies for two years for justice involved families. FFM uses these vouchers and subsidies specifically for McKinney-Vento homeless youth.
Beyond these core services, FFM is also involved in:
Advocacy/ Policy: Advocating for policies and practices that promote fair treatment and equal opportunities for individuals with criminal records, working to remove barriers to reentry.
Community Engagement: Collaborating with various community-based organizations, government agencies, employers, and healthcare providers to create a comprehensive support system.
Overdose Prevention: Providing Narcan to low-income communities.
Support for Vulnerable Populations: Expanding services to assist populations beyond the formerly incarcerated, such as the elderly, those experiencing homelessness, and those with criminal backgrounds coupled with a disability. They also support homeless children registered in the McKinney-Vento program whose parents or caregivers have a criminal background.
Black Peoples Community Justice Center: Kenny Robinson is also a co-founder of this organization, which provides court support, jail support (including commissary and bail assistance for those on poverty bonds), and aims to steer individuals away from active prison sentences and into reentry programs like FFM.
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