JUSTICE AND THE JUSTICE MOVEMENT

Justice as a Definition of Inalienable Human Rights

Justice is a big word with even bigger implications. It's more than a subject; it's an invitation. Not only does it define the very essence of God and His desire for compassion on the earth, but it is an evolving era in which we have the opportunity to participate and a responsibility to steward.

In its simplest form justice can mean recognizing and doing something about the plight of the poor, the overlooked, the disenfranchised, the oppressed, and the enslaved. It can range all the way from taking responsibility for the needs in your neighborhood to searching out the rights of children who have been inducted into armies around the world. The faces of justice can look like the twenty seven million people trapped in modern day slavery or it can look like the poor not many miles from your home.

One of the biggest things that stands out to me is that almost every biblical passage that speaks on justice is connected to a verb. Biblical justice is not a topic; it’s a call to some form of action. Today you and I are called to seek justice, to defend the orphans, to plead the cause of the widows, to deliver the one who has been robbed from the power of his oppressors, to loosenthe chains of injustice, to visit the orphans and the widows in their distress.

So many of us are truly living for one thing: knowing God. We build our entire existence and culture around knowing Him. In Jeremiah 22:16 the Lord connects His definition of knowing Him to pleading the cause of the afflicted.

In these days I believe the Lord is calling us to find Him in “the least of these”. “To the extent that you did it to the least of these, you did it to me. For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited Me in, I was naked and you clothed Me, I was sick and you visited Me, I was in prison and you came to Me."

Justice is something we do. It’s the works that verify our faith beyond our own benefit. Someone has said justice is what love looks like in public. The following material is meant to broaden us, to be a bridge from the smallness of lives spent upon ourselves and from the poverty of living for the one to the richness of living for others.

CHANGE NEEDED TO BRING IMPACT

Traditional Missions to Innovative Impact

For the past century or two, churches have followed a traditional missions model that has primarily focused on spreading the gospel. This model is familiar, culturally comfortable, well funded and has all the necessary support systems in place.

To implement the myriad of biblical injunctions on pursuing justice, however, requires new vision, new hearts, new workers, and new techniques. A younger generation of justice workers and a new breed of nonprofit organizations (NPO’s) are being raised up with focus, energy, and specific equipping to directly impact various justice causes.

By finding, developing, and deploying these new workers and nonprofits, we can see an effective implementing of the Lord's mandate of Seeking Justice, Defending the Orphans, Pleading the Cause of the Widows, Correcting Oppression, Delivering the One who has been robbed through the power of his oppressors and Loosening the Chains of Injustice. We can with purpose and intention move beyond our comfortably guarded culture and join the ranks of Job by Investigating the causes of the ones we do not know and Opening our mouths for all the unfortunate and all those who have no voice.

Job 29:16, Isaiah 1:17; Jeremiah 22:3,16; James 1:27

CREATING A JUSTICE COMMUNITYNational and Regional Gatherings

Issachar International has hosted many local gatherings focused on developing a culture invigorated by critical thinking on the substantive issues of justice. The objective is to go beyond discussions into strategies and solutions, because for the one dedicated to justice, change is not an option; it is a mandate.

At a recent gathering in our home my son asked other justice workers, what would have helped them the most when they began their journey. The dominant answer was mentoring, for someone to have been there to help guide, steer questions and encourage. These gatherings are intended to facilitate meeting that need by promoting a culture of supportive relationships.

These gatherings are vitally important

The life of an individual dedicated to justice is often exposed to extreme suffering and injustice that can take a heavy toll physically, psychologically, and often spiritually. A clear intention in these gatherings is to provide an environment that lends itself to rest, relaxation, recuperation and rejuvenation.

These gathering are also for the purpose of building the culture, strengthening friendships, and providing a relational aspect in recruiting people into the cause.

We provide a forum for stimulating interaction, in which ideas and experiences are exchanged.

Included in this support network are potential mentorships in the form of links between those beginning a journey of advocacy and those more seasoned.

TRAINING INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE WORKERSTraining and Education

Especially critical in the fight for justice is the need for change at the systemic level in institutions and policies that either ignore or promote oppression.

Issachar International is committed to supporting the education of individuals who are on the cutting edge of the intellectual and legal fronts of the justice movement. Becoming qualified to assume positions where one may leverage influence in the decisions of government and non-government entities is of key importance. Seeking higher education in order to gain the additional knowledge, credibility and access necessary to influence public policy on justice issues has tremendous strategic value.

Jennifer Hendrixson

Jennifer is pursuing a Master of Arts degree at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies as a representative of Divine Inheritance and their work in rescuing child soldiers. Her objective is to research the issues surrounding the exploitation of women and chil­dren and to leverage her access to policy makers and programs in the nation’s capital on their behalf.

For the next two years, Jennifer will be produc­ing research on the issues surrounding the use of children as soldiers in Southeast Asia and will be working to create replicable models for address­ing the needs of rescued child soldiers (aftercare). She will establish connections with government and non-government agencies in Washington, DC, for the purposes of fundraising and advo­cacy.

Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies is one of the world’s premier academic institutions for the study of international affairs and is the only school in the United States that has a regional focus on Southeast Asia.

Johns Hopkins has several of the world’s top ex­perts on Burma and an entire research institute devoted to the study of women’s and children’s rights with regard to human trafficking and la­bor exploitation. It is the perfect forum for shap­ing policy on the care of child soldiers. Jennifer is uniquely qualified for this type of education. She was a dual-major honors graduate with a 4.0 grade point average from the University of California, Davis. After working for 2 years in China, she served as Director of Operations for Divine Inheritance and is now starting a new nonprofit organization called the Child Soldier Rescue Alliance.

Issachar International is seeking funds to support Jennifer’s education. The cost of attendance at Johns Hopkins would ordinarily be prohibitive for a justice worker who has devoted years to the causes of the oppressed. Jennifer has earned a 50% scholarship but needs to raise an addi­tional $45,000 per year to cov­er the balance of tuition and living expens­es for her two years at Johns Hopkins.

Required Annual Investment:

(for each of the Next Two Years)

• Tuition (Balance After 50% Scholarship) $20,000
• Research (Travel and Supplies) $5,100
• Living Expenses (Conservative Estimate) $16,000
• Language Study (Thai/Burmese) $3,900

Yearly total: $45,000

Jennifer is a woman of supreme excellence and integrity who is a real world-changer. Your financial help and now will keep her on track and making steady progress in the forethought and implementation of justice solutions. See contact information below.

DIVINE INHERITANCERescuing Child Soldiers Today

There are over 100,000 child soldiers in Southeast Asia: a figure that represents fully one third of the world’s child soldiers. Child soldiers are boys and girls from five to fifteen years of age who work in government and resistance armies throughout Southeast Asia. Child soldiers include orphans forcibly recruited into the army and children voluntarily given up by their families, abducted or coerced by recruiters, or captured as prisoners of war when their villages are attacked by opposing armies. Child soldiers are considered expendable and are often malnourished, severely overworked and subjected to verbal, physical and sexual abuse.

Issachar International supports Divine Inheritance, an organization dedicated to rescuing child soldiers. Divine Inheritance (DI) labors in restricted access regions of Southeast Asia, where children are truly at risk. In 2005, DI negotiated the voluntary release of more than 100 child soldiers from a local governmental army. DI currently cares for 200 orphans, 133 of whom are child soldiers rescued by DI.

Caring for Orphans
DI takes orphans out of hopeless situations and provides them with shelter, food, clothing, education, spir¬itual care, and love. These children, through Di’s provision of access to primary and secondary education and vocational training, are being trained to become leaders in their society. These children learn to enjoy God’s ways, carry a spirit of excellence and hold immense potential to create a positive impact that could reshape the regions where they live.

Sustainable Solutions via Entrepreneurship
DI has a long history of developing entrepreneurial solutions that have provided a sustainable livelihood for the orphans and child soldiers in their care.

DI’s purchase of land for a tea farm provides agricultural training while generating profits for the child soldiers’ economic futures.

Meet the Founders
Marcus and Alyxius Young founded Divine Inheritance in 1993, building upon the labors of previous generations. The Young family has been working in the Burma region for four generations and is one of the classic stories highlighted in the book Eternity in Their Hearts. Please visit their website to learn more and support their cause directly. http://www.divineinheritance.com/

Marcus and Alyxius Young founders of Divine Inheritance are not only rescuing child soldiers from an unimaginable life of trauma but they also give them love, a home, and a new identity and future. Help eliminate their only restriction from rescuing more children by your gracious support.

BRINGING RELIEF TO THE FRONT LINES

Issachar International supports efforts to bring relief to oppressed peoples in the darkest parts of the world. Since 1949, in one Asian country alone thousands of people have been killed, millions have been displaced, villages have been attacked and burned and many people have been forced into slavery.

Jesse, serving as the Director of Logistics for a multi-ethnic relief organization working in war-torn regions, has been providing logistical support, training, medical supplies and treatment, food, clothing, shelter, educational resources as well as spiritual and health counseling for the suffering and abused.

“It is a real joy to see the faces of displaced peo¬ple light up as we visit them, treat their medical problems, hold activities and games for the chil¬dren, or help them document their plight,” Jesse said.

In just one of many cases, Jesse and his team transported a woman by carrying her in a hammock for four hours to a clinic. She had been working in her rice field several months earlier when the army fired upon her, shooting her in the hip and leaving her to die. After emergency first aid, she was still unable to walk. So at great risk they brought her across enemy lines to a place where she received a hip replacement and is now walking again.

The cost for supporting Jesse on the field for one year is $15,000, and that includes airfare and all living expenses. As my son said, “that is a lot of bang for your buck”! Issachar International and our friends help support Jesse on the front lines as he continues coordinating relief efforts to displaced peoples and bringing awareness of their plight to the outside world.

Jesse’s Statistics (for six months in 2008)
Mountain miles walked 300
Rangers supported 200
Days spent in hostile regions 81
Teams supported 43
Trips to border 20
Tons of materials carried in 5
Vehicles maintained 5

Jesse may have the largest servant heart of anyone we know. Support a hidden life searching out the broken and oppressed in some of the world’s most dangerous places with your contribution.

TOUCHING THE LOCAL WORLDTerrance French

Cirvant Ministries
Terrance French of Cirvant Ministries is a man whose own life story has become the impetus for extraordinary compassion for the abandoned or abused children of urban poverty. As a poet, songwriter, and cutting edge singer, he employs his gifts and talents to be an advocate for those who have no voice, as well as an agent for healing hearts deeply scarred.

Terrance is cur­rently partnering with Love In A Big World to implement service learning projects in dozens of schools in Tennessee. Love In A Big World (LBW) entertains, educates, & inspires Kids Character Hope. LBW provides character education pro­grams and materials to public schools for chil­dren in K-8th grade, with emphasis on four basic strategies: curricu­lum, performing arts, literacy and commu­nity development, offering schools staff development courses, curriculum, student assemblies, music CD’s, morning an­nouncements, and classroom resource materials including NIE (Newspapers in Education).

Jesus in the Hood
Beyond the schools, Cirvant Ministries is dedicated to serving neighborhoods located in the inner city, and envisions “Dream House” centers that would provide a safe atmosphere for youth of the inner city to dream and explore their creative gifts.

Extending his many facets of service beyond the USA, Terrance has traveled multiple times to Uganda, Africa on behalf of orphans and child soldiers, and is currently working in Capetown, South Africa, in some of the most broken social contexts. His immense compassion is coupled with a vision for practical solutions. He has a heart to see Mission Houses established providing a family structure and educa­tion for those same orphans and street children.

From a fullness of developing personhood Terrance is a man of substance impacting people wherever he goes. Currently he has few avenues from which to draw support, and your gift to him could really make a difference.

CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONSImproving the Odds of Global Justice

Challenges of the Justice Worker and the Justice-Focused NPO

The challenges are substantial because the jus­tice worker or a new NPO focused on justice issues is not typically birthed out of larger well-established and well-funded churches or organi­zations. Therefore he or she not only lacks all of the regular economic, structural, and cultural sup­port of traditional missions, but the very support they need is already allocated to the older mis­sions model. Almost always this forces them out on their own, starting from scratch, underfunded, under-equipped, and sustained only by a heart to do justice and an entrepreneurial spirit. This gives place to a broad base of needs.

Issachar International Helps Implement Solutions and Systems

There is a significant number of individuals in the business world who, having achieved eco­nomic success, are now in pursuit of a life of sig­nificance. This quest has led them beyond writing checks into new arenas by taking their lifelong developed and God-blessed talents and skill sets and investing them in and through the lives of oth­ers, especially the younger generation.

Bridges Between the Business Community and Justice Workers

One of our goals is to build bridges between the justice community and our corporate relationships by providing contexts for friendship, counseling, mentoring and eventually funding or cooperative economic endeavors. Issachar International will be the overseer and administrator of all joint projects, thus providing relational as well as project accountability.

Where more direct involvement is desired; mentoring relationships or sponsorships could take on the following characteristics:

• Building a history of understanding the justice worker’s values, history and vision via reading and interacting in the web arena. I feel this will be a great way for a business minded person to gain a candid bird’s eye view of the potential relationship.
• Inviting justice workers to speak in their homes, churches, or at their marketplace meetings.
• Providing a place for the justice worker to get some rest and recuperation. This could be in their home, vacation house or sponsoring a mini vacation.
• On site visits to the worker’s projects in order to gain compassion and insight. This would provide an opportunity to offer advice and investigate the poten­tial of cooperative ventures.
• Participating in the national and re­gional gatherings.

Successful Business People Use Direct Skill Sets to Contribute

Currently Issachar International is in an expansion phase looking to the future by beginning to net­work business mentors with justice workers to provide the following:

1. Leadership Development

• Life coaching
• Business mentoring
• Management training and team building
• Training and Graduate School

2. Administrative Support

• Business plan consulting
• Legal assistance
• NPO/501(c) 3 compliance
• Technical support

3. Funding and Fiscal Management

• Grant writing
• Budget
• Sustainability models
• Sponsor networking

ENTREPRENEURSHIP EMPOWERS JUSTICE

Entrepreneurship Provides Sustainability

Justice often deals with rights violations, eco­nomic marginalization or the outright enslave­ment of the 27 million people in the world today. In fighting for justice you not only fight oppres­sors but you also enable, equip, and empower in­dividuals to be self sustaining. This naturally leads one into economic endeav­ors. This entrepreneurial core value of Issachar International is imbedded into all of our workers and projects.

In the spirit of social entrepreneurship, Issachar International will also be focused on establishing business opportunities for the sole purpose of sustaining particular projects the field reps are involved in. An example of a currently opera­tive for-profit endeavor is the Mennonite Central Committee. They have a nationwide chain of stores called 10,000 Villages. They purchase fair­ly traded work of native artists in less developed countries and sell them in the west through their stores. This model also provides educational and training components through which field reps can develop their skill sets.

MENTORING IN THE EQUATION

Life on Life Discipleship and Teamwork
Our experience has been that a young person in our current church culture with a desire to move beyond his or her initial foray into the world of justice issues to more sustainable solutions discovers that there are no preparatory programs, few if any mentors to encourage and give counsel, and no organiza­tion that oversees their fiscal needs unless they are representing that nonprofit.

It can be a lonely journey, especially once they start to do work in the field, where they are often exposed to extreme suffering and injustice that can take a significant toll physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Issachar International facilitates mentoring relationships by linking justice workers who are new to the field with more seasoned veterans. We also match justice workers with successful business professionals and entrepreneurs who can mentor them in developing new projects, programs and organizations.

RAISING AWARENESS IN THE CHURCH

To raise awareness, Issachar International co-sponsored a Justice Fair at our local church. First, we surveyed all of the people who where involved in justice causes in our church. By starting with those we already knew and communicating with the congregation, we found 19 nonprofits represented in our congregation of approximately 900. Some of those individu-als or organizations were well established, while others were in the formative stages. We coached them on how to effectively present their cause and organization, then we invited the church to attend the Justice Fair.

Exposing church members to a variety of justice organizations raised their awareness of issues, gave them an opportunity to connect with organizations they wanted to support, and inspired them to pursue causes of their own. It also validated the justice workers, who can often feel overlooked and unsupported by their own churches because they don’t fall within traditional church missions nor their budget.

JUSTICE IN THE ARTSExposing Slavery in America

A powerful means of influence in the justice movement is raising awareness of issues through journalism, media and the arts. These vehicles of communication can profoundly impact the church and motivate Christians toward meaningful involvement. Issachar International can help journalists and artists influence the surrounding culture by providing equipment, materials and continued training in the use of technology.

Slavery in America

Two years ago President Bush stood before the United Nations and declared there where 100,000 modern day slaves in America. This fact is astounding to most Americans. These painfully poignant pictures and artwork are but a few of many renderings done by women in America who had either been abducted and forced into sexual slavery or suffered sexual abuse as children.

NOW THAT I KNOWEvery Means of Contribution Helps

After ten years of increasing involvement with these justice workers and their causes, we eventually came to the conclusion that for us our best efforts at fighting injustice was to do all we could to support those engaged in the battle; to find, encourage, equip, empower and eventually deploy those whose life calling is to fight injustice. The bottom line: these workers are for the poor and the oppressed, and we are here for them.

The efforts at Issachar International have been fruitful and in time the Lord has proven a unified heart, a shared vision, a growing community of focused friends and a progressive life calling for the founders, David and Peggy Fitzpatrick. We feel the issue of justice, the generations, and specifically our approach to these issues is very relevant to the world we all live in. That’s why we want to invite you to join us in helping the justice workers.

Please contact us if you have any interest in the following:

• Learning more about mentoring a justice worker or his or her organization;
• Giving directly toward a worker or a project;
• Making a tax-deductible donation to Issachar International, thus empowering us to expand our organization’s capacity in further developing and providing the services mentioned here.

Your support will without a doubt change the lives of people and organizations illustrated here. Please consider this: empower one laborer for justice, and ultimately, through the course of their lives the number of lives impacted will be limitless. Thank you.

Issachar International is no longer taking donations and we would encourage all gifts to be made directly to Divine Inheritance.

To make a specific donation toward Jennifer, Jesse or Terrance, please specify accordingly with Divine Inheritance. Gifts specifically for Divine Inheritance can be sent directly to them. See www.divineinheritance.com