Meet the projects and initiatives that the JustPax Fund helped launch in 2014.  

The following grantees reflect community, national, and transnational interests who collectively were awarded $58,200 (US) by the JustPax Fund through an un-solicited grant making program in the Fund’s inaugural year.

JustPax Fund 2014 grantees illustrate a wide, diverse and compelling range of expressed interests, strategies of action, methods of engagement, passion and creativity in their interpretation of and responses to matters of justice in the context of gender, the environment and economy.

 

TimeBanking & the Women’s Small Business Program 
Mercy Connections, Burlington, Vermont

$12,000 grant to support the development of a time banking program across rural Vermont with women drawn from Mercy Connection’s wide ranging network of small business program alumnae.

The TimeBank, a relational based non-monetized system of exchange valuing labor – time –justly and equitably- is envisioned by Mercy Connections as a means to further develop their network of alumnae, all of whom are women pursuing entrepreneurship.

The Women’s Small Business TimeBank is to be a sustainable means of engagement to foster connections, ignite and spur entrepreneurial innovation, encourage and promote cooperative action and support the empowerment of women in and through business.

 

Silent Violence Project
Applied Social Sciences, Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Virginia

$10,200 grant supporting a two-year project on the empowerment of domestic violence survivors through story telling.  Silent Violence Project specifically works with domestic survivors from within three communities of structurally marginalized women: homeless women, undocumented Latinas and conservative Mennonite Women.

The premise of the Silent Violence Project is that each of these groups of women is particularly vulnerable within their home settings due to socially constructed risks associated with their race, class and gender identities. Silent Violence actively addresses the silence around ‘hidden’ forms of household violence by surfacing and validating survivor’s narratives and honoring the need for gender justice explicitly within often overlooked communities.

The particular significance of the Silent Violence Project is founded in the  ability to surface surivor’s stories in ways that radically open up space for ‘truth-telling” in contexts wherein the right to give testimony has been fundamentally silenced.  Moreover the showcasing of these ‘voices from below’ invites healing for the individual in addition to igniting collective public consciousness.

The overarching intent of the Silent Violence is therefore to give voice to these survivors in ways that shift public behavioral mores and challenge complicit institutional norms.  In doing so, cycles of personal and institutional violence are opened to purview and held accountable to a broader public.

 

How on Earth: Flourishing in a Not for Profit World by 2050
The Post Growth Institute

$10,700 grant to support the work of publishing the book How on Earth: Flourishing in a Not for Profit World by 2050.  How on Earth highlights the rapid emergence of not-for-profit enterprises around the world, which are different from for-profit enterprises in that, non-profits cannot be privatized and they seek to generate enough revenue to be financially self-sufficient.

Rooted in Post Growth economics, Post Growth approaches seek to build on the existing aspects of our world that are sustainable in order to create resilient futures. This includes strengthening ecologically and socially sustainable practices, while recognizing the physical limits of the earth.

A Post Growth economy places life and everything needed to maintain it at the center of economic and social activity as opposed to the never-ending accumulation of money, and the pursuit of growth of all kinds without regard for its consequences.  Rather than blaming the social and ecological injustices on a few select players, How on Earth is focused on changing the rules of economics by introducing a Post-Growth macroeconomic model that illustrates how an entirely not for profit economy would be an economy that serves people and the planet, instead of the other way around.

 

The Journey Home: A Digital Storytelling Project
Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS), Akron, Pennsylvania

$7,000 grant to support a digital story telling project to promote and inculcate the ethic of voluntary service of MDS in relationship to individuals, families and communities impacted by natural disasters.  The Journey Home is promoted as a means for education, inspire hope, and compel engagement through the authentic stories of the survivor’s experience in a natural disaster.

The Journey Home seeks to illustrate the approach of MDS in response to disasters where MDS works alongside victims who are often racially, socially and economically marginalized. People and communities who are significantly more vulnerable to the impact and aftermath of disasters due to lack of resources, diminished resilience and support.  People and communities who are often hidden in plain sight from the breaking stories of headline news.

 

Rapid Re-Housing / Housing First Responses to Family Homelessness
Bridge of Hope National, Exton, Pennsylvania                                                                         

$7,200 grant to support methods of research oriented toward improving outcomes of Bridge of Hope’s strategies and programs for Re-Housing and Housing First initiatives for single women and their children in times of crises and transitions.

Funds will also support research and critical inquiry that will enable Bridge of Hope to better advocate for and generate awareness of family homelessness and more effectively promote through Bridge of Hope’s national network, their methods of congregational-based engagement and mentoring as strategy for a long-term solution to family homelessness.

 

Jane House Project
Community Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, Virginia  

$4,000 grant to support The Jane House Project that will gather small groups of people across social lines for evenings out on the town in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Envisioning a city where human difference is leveraged to create shared identity and a more just sociocultural economy, Jane House partners with local organizations connected to diverse populations—immigrants, business leaders, church congregants, social service clientele—to bring together people who might otherwise never meet. Jane House groups will attend local cultural events and dine at local restaurants together, free of charge, each outing providing a platform for just social encounters, mutual understanding, and organic pathways for integration and cooperation.

Named for Jane Addams of Hull House and Jane Jacobs of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the Jane House Project believes just development depends on strong relationships across all socioeconomic spheres, from the household to the neighborhood, city, and beyond. Jane House aims to facilitate relationship networks that foster the unique identities of individuals and communities while linking them together, creating a healthy human ecology. By providing shared experiences for disparate people, the project aims to boost social capital, civic cooperation, mutual development, and a sense of belonging for all.

Community Mennonite Church of Harrisonburg, the umbrella organization for the Jane House Project, promotes the values of service, justice, tolerance, mutuality, and religious liberty.