Dear supporters of JONAH (and potential supporters) –
The work that JONAH does in the Chippewa Valley is essential, but it is also difficult, time-consuming, and sometimes seems to be without hope. Of course, it is that difficulty that makes it so worthwhile and satisfying! It is one thing to be charitable – to give a hungry person a meal, to help a person living on the streets with a bottle of water or clothing for a job interview – but JONAH works upstream, trying to change the systems that lead to people needing a meal, or a bottle of water, or a place to live. Many wonderful organizations are doing the work to provide for people in need. Not as many groups are doing the kind of work that JONAH does, which is to engineer social and political change to ensure that no one ever falls into a state of being in need.
It’s a heavy task we have taken on! It’s also a very important one. Until no one is oppressed, until no one goes hungry or homeless or without medical care, until no one is mistreated because of their immigration status or sexuality or gender, until the laws apply equally to all people and all people have equality under the law; until such time, we are living unjustly. The members and supporters of JONAH believe deeply that we must be a society – and a country, and a world – of justice.
To that end, our many volunteers and our staff put in long hours, extraordinary passion, creativity, and love, changing the systems that need to be changed. And our many supporters, many of whom are also volunteers, help JONAH by supporting our mission with their hard-earned dollars. JONAH’s work requires a lot of money – partly because our staff deserve to be paid for dedicating so much of their lives to this work, and also because the ones who benefit from the systems staying just as they are have far deeper pockets than we do, and they use it to work at maintaining the status quo (or even moving us backwards).
Thank you all for your generosity – your financial help is essential to making sure JONAH can do the work that we are called to do. And your financial help isn’t just a gift to JONAH, it’s a gift to the community and even a gift to yourself, too, because we all do better when we all do better.
Let’s make the world a better place!
Rev. David Huber, JONAH president