About Us - Mission statement / Core values
JVC Northwest Mission Statement
Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest engages women and men in a transforming experience of full-time volunteer service. Jesuit Volunteers work for a year or more in solidarity with persons living on the margins of society and with vulnerable places in the Pacific Northwest.
Rooted for over fifty years in the Jesuit Catholic tradition emphasizing spiritual openness and depth, Jesuit Volunteers in the Northwest examine and act on the causes of social and environmental injustice to promote peace and structural change. Jesuit Volunteers live in communities that commit to simple living embodying a healing and sustainable presence on the Earth.
JVC Northwest Core Values
Over the years, the experience of volunteers and their reflection on that experience have been distilled into four values: community, simple living, social justice and spirituality. JVs make a commitment to the JVC Northwest program and to their service placements to strive to live these four interconnected values.
COMMUNITY: JVs live with one another in a community setting. The process of building community offers an opportunity to share experience, faith and hope. Women and men come to JVC Northwest with diverse backgrounds and expectations. The challenge for each person is to respect and learn from these differences while building on common values. Community requires time, effort and sacrifice, while giving back many wonderful, unexpected gifts. Volunteer communities are places to share and grow collectively and individually. Living in community often marks the beginning of lasting friendships.
SIMPLE LIVING: JVC Northwest challenges each volunteer to live a simple and reflective lifestyle, an alternative way to living in a consumer society. JVC Northwest stresses spiritual values over material possessions and invites volunteers to integrate their faith by working and living among those who experience poverty and oppression. This helps volunteers to experience the lives of those with whom they interact on a daily basis and to raise their consciousness to the human needs surrounding them. Often, volunteers find that living simply opens them up to a more joyful way of life, appreciating small wonders that often go unnoticed in everyday life.
SOCIAL JUSTICE: JVC Northwest is committed to working for social and ecological justice and structural change through faith. Volunteers work with others dedicated to serving people's basic physical, emotional and spiritual needs. JVC Northwest encourages and nurtures the empowerment of people who live on the margins of society by supporting programs allowing people to help themselves. Through work and reflection on lived experiences, JVs examine the causes of oppression and look for ways to bring about justice in our world.
SPIRITUALITY: A vital aspect of the JVC Northwest year is the opportunity for the volunteers to explore and deepen their spiritual lives. Their journey is part of a life-long process that can be both comforting and unsettling, joyous and painful. The volunteers are "contemplatives in action" - women and men who are committed to the Gospel, integrating faith and working for justice. Because the volunteers live in community, they have the opportunity to reflect and pray with other committed Christians and people of faith, and to participate in liturgical celebrations. The expression of spirituality, which grows out of work for justice and living Gospel values, makes volunteers part of an active and prophetic church.
