PLACE.
PURPOSE.
POSSIBILITY.

Celebrating 20 Years of XDS

Where food is medicine, housing is healthcare, and connection is everything.

For 20 years, our community has made XDS and the Farm at Penny Lane a place where people belong, find purpose, and imagine new possibilities.

Thursday, October 29, 2026
5:30–8:30 PM (Program + Award Presentation begin at 6:45 PM.)
The Farm at Penny Lane | Pittsboro, NC

Our 10/29 celebration is now at capacity.

We’re grateful for the extraordinary response and look forward to celebrating 20 years of XDS with our community.

Share your XDS story

Can’t join us? Get involved in other ways!

This is more than an anniversary.

It is an opportunity to celebrate the community that built XDS, tell the stories of what has grown here, reconnect people to the Farm at Penny Lane, and invite our community to imagine what becomes possible in the next 20 years.

PLACE

A place to belong changes what is possible.

For 20 years, XDS has created places where people can belong, grow, and participate in community.

Sometimes that place is someone's own home. XDS was founded to create the first Assertive Community Treatment Team (ACTT) in North Carolina. ACT Teams help adults with severe mental illness live in their homes instead of institutions or on the streets. Now, led by our partner UNC CECMH, there are over 80 ACT Teams across the state.

Sometimes it is the Farm at Penny Lane—a place where gardens, animals, food, art, nature, movement, relationships, and meaningful work become part of how healing happens. Here, adults living with serious mental illness find opportunities for recovery, connection, and purpose, while youth experiencing mental health challenges build resilience through upstream, preventive support.

Sometimes it is a tiny home that offers stability, dignity, and a community of neighbors.

Sometimes it is a school or community setting, where XDS brings youth mental health resilience-building beyond the Farm and into the places young people already live, learn, and connect.

Sometimes it is The Hub in Wake County, a place where people can experience a haircut, a recording studio, and skill building through occupational therapy support.

Place is not simply where XDS delivers services. Place is part of the intervention.

What grows here?

Vegetables, herbs, flowers, and fruit, certainly. But also hope. Confidence. Friendship. Skills. Recovery. Purpose. Belonging. Community.

The Farm itself is part of the XDS story.

PURPOSE

Meaningful lives are built through meaningful activity.

XDS has always understood that mental health and well-being are about more than symptoms or services. It’s about the social drivers of health and wellbeing.

People need reasons to get up in the morning. Opportunities to contribute. Relationships that matter. Activities that build identity, confidence, and connection.

At XDS and the Farm at Penny Lane, purpose can be found in growing food, preparing and sharing a meal, caring for animals, creating art, working, learning, volunteering, spending time in nature, developing new skills, and contributing to a community.

These everyday experiences can become pathways toward recovery, resilience, identity, dignity, and belonging.

Food. Work. Art. Nature. Relationships. Contribution. Community.

Purpose is built through the meaningful things we do and the relationships we build while doing them.

POSSIBILITY

Twenty years of learning
points toward what comes next.

XDS's story has always been one of imagining possibilities that did not yet exist—and then bringing together the people, partnerships, resources, and persistence needed to build them.

Today, the lessons of our first 20 years are helping shape our next chapter. That includes strengthening the infrastructure and sustainability that allow community-rooted care to endure; expanding opportunities for youth and young adults; developing the next generation of the behavioral health workforce; deepening academic, clinical, civic, and community partnerships; continuing to test new ways of building healthier, more connected communities, and thanking YOU, our XDS community.

What becomes possible when people belong?

What becomes possible when housing is understood as healthcare, food as medicine, meaningful activity as part of recovery, and connection as essential to well-being?

After 20 years, XDS is still asking big questions—and exploring what becomes possible alongside our community.

EXPERIENCE THE CELEBRATION

This is a celebration of a community.

Longtime friends will reconnect. New friends will discover the Farm. We will share food, tell stories, honor extraordinary leaders and partnerships, celebrate what has grown here, and imagine together what the next 20 years can make possible.

October 29 · 5:30–8:30 PM
Program + Award Presentations begin at 7:00 PM.

Our 10/29 celebration is now at capacity.

We’re grateful for the extraordinary response and look forward to celebrating 20 years of XDS with our community.

Can’t join us? Get involved in other ways!

This is a celebration, not a fundraising event. That evening, we’ll introduce the Place, Purpose, Possibility Campaign—an invitation to be part of what comes next.

The XDS Awards: Honoring Our Community

The anniversary awards help tell a larger story: XDS was not built by one organization or one person. It grew through leadership, partnership, advocacy, persistence, and a community willing to imagine something different.

XDS Distinguished Partnership Award

UNC Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health

With special recognition of Dr. John Gilmore

For 15 years, the UNC Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health has been an extraordinary partner to XDS and The Farm at Penny Lane—investing in this place, the people it serves, and the future of community-based mental health care.

Since 2011, our partnership has advanced innovation, recovery, and behavioral health equity while helping prepare the next generation of the behavioral health workforce through hands-on learning in community mental health, interprofessional care, and nature-based approaches.

The Inaugural XDS Distinguished Partnership Award honors what UNC CECMH and XDS built together, with special recognition of Dr. John Gilmore, who has led UNC CECMH since its inception and has been an instrumental partner to XDS.

PARTNERSHIP · INNOVATION · LEGACY · POSSIBILITY

XDS Community Leadership Award

Chatham Commissioner
Karen Howard

The Inaugural XDS Community Leadership Award recognizes Commissioner Karen Howard for visionary community leadership, public service, and steadfast advocacy for mental health, belonging, and the well-being of Chatham County.

Since her election to the Chatham County Board of Commissioners in 2014, Commissioner Howard has championed issues that shape the health and future of her community, with a particular commitment to community mental health and the prevention of serious mental illness among youth and young adults. Her service extends across education, behavioral health, transportation, and statewide policy.

Commissioner Howard's leadership reflects something XDS deeply believes: Mental health and wellbeing don't exist in isolation. They are shaped by belonging, opportunity, connection, and the communities we create together.

LEADERSHIP · ADVOCACY · CONNECTION · POSSIBILITY

You are part of the story.

XDS and the Farm at Penny Lane were never built by XDS alone.

Over the years, participants, families, community partners, volunteers, students, clinicians, educators, artists, gardeners, chefs, neighbors, donors, staff, and friends have brought their ideas, expertise, generosity, time, meals, hands, hearts, and belief in what this place could become.

So much of what people now associate with XDS and the Farm grew through those relationships.

As part of our 20th Anniversary, we're gathering the memories and experiences that make up that history.