Looking Back, Looking Forward: Jesuit Volunteer Community BY GED EDWARDS

JVC recently held it’s 21st Birthday party in St Frances Xavier Church Liverpool, everyone agreed it was a lovely evening. Ged Edwards gave this speech, looking back at the first JVC community.

I’m delighted to be asked to speak tonight.  It’s a real privilege to be here on such an occasion, an occasion we could barely dream off 21 years ago.  I’ve always felt that JVC is a movement, not a voluntary organisation and our collective presence here tonight shows how true that is.

Lest we forget where we’ve come from, JVC was Jesuit Volunteer Corps and started in Alaska about 50 years ago.  Eddy Bermingham SJ was asked by The Society of Jesus, the Jesuits to set up JVC: Britain.  To do this in 1985 he approached 2 students Tess Clancy and Sue Hogg to go to the States to experience JVC programme there and to come back and after a short while take on the running of JVC: Britain which he started to shape in their absence.  While Eddy was recruiting the first community, building links with Community Service Volunteers and the Housing Department in Liverpool, Tess and Sue were in California and Montana.  At 21, Tess ran a soup kitchen for up to 600 homeless people a day in Sacramento which was part of the Loaves and Fishes Project inspired by Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement so she’s the longest-standing volunteer with us tonight.

Last September, twenty years after its formation of the first JVC: Britain community JVC Liverpool (or JVC Rialto as we knew it), we held a reunion attended by five of the first six JVC volunteers (Jo Sullivan, David Cronin, Ann Wilson, Patrick Sweeney and me), and Tess Clancy and Ken Vance from the Management Team and Sr Liz Stinson SND: Community Partner, four of us are here tonight.

We had a great day wandering around the European Capital of Culture.  We knew a different culture back then in Toxteth where we had lived for the year.  In 1987, the area was still struggling with the label of the infamous Toxteth riots of 1981 and burnt buildings and dereliction were to be seen everywhere.  We lived in two dilapidated maisonettes in Berkeley St which we had to decorate (after taking down the red light bulbs!) and hurriedly furnish with furniture from a flat where someone had done a moonlight flit.  In our JVC year our work took us away from Toxteth but we tried hard to support the local community and be accepted there too.  One of our community, Steve Jobling was a brilliant magician and the local kids a keen audience so that for the years the Liverpool community was based in Berkeley St, they were all known as “The Magies”.  We helped in the Toxteth Carnival in our year and when some children tried to break into the flat when we were away on the Spirituality Weekend, people we didn’t know came and boarded the place up late at night and thrashed the culprits.  We were in!

When we got to the area last September, it had changed so much.  Both blocks of flats, which had been so liberally decorated with graffiti, had been pulled down and new, smart terraces put in their place, and other houses given a facelift.  It was a great physical improvement but the memories of being there, in a place I thought of as so much as home, were still so powerful and I was glad we were together to experience it.

Then off to Liz’s for prayerful reflection.  We looked at the four JVC values of simplicity, community, spirituality (Ignatian) and social justice, where they had influenced us over the years and what they meant for us now.  We took time to reflect also on the JVC USA strap line “Ruined For Life”.  After all that time. were we?

We noted how the values were continuing to shape little things – like running the office tea fund – as well as having shaped major choices, like careers in health, social and environmental work.  The friendships we had had remained vitally important.  Some of us were ruined in terms of personal relationship: the quality of those relationships, people who had been complete strangers, had been so strong and now we badly missed community living and contact with like-minded people as we had spilt up over the UK and this was hard to come by.  Community is such a powerful, natural and necessary experience it will be rediscovered and JVC is part of that effort.  Where God is leading us is alive for us still and all of us are still strongly drawn to Ignatian spirituality with its foundation of contemplation in action.

Simple lifestyle had become more of an issue for some with environmental issues coming to the fore.  How can we live more simply and share what we have with others?  What are the benefits of this?  In terms of social justice, for most of us dealing with systems and bureaucracies rather than just with the people we signed up to help was causing us to scratch our heads.  We were being paid as professionals and we welcomed that for the most part.  But was this helping others as well as it might – or ourselves?  Again, the simplicity of being in touch with others as volunteers, running soup kitchens, cooking with someone who lives in a hostel or playing the piano in an old people’s home brought back vivid memories of individuals we had formed bonds with.

JVC: Britain started amid a blaze of interest from the Society which was exploring in particular how its charism of Ignatian spirituality could be used with lay people.  During the year we were visited by many people most notably by the then Provincial, Michael Campbell-Johnston SJ and by Alec Dixon, the founder of Community Service Volunteers who had advised President Kennedy on establishing the American Peace Corps who stayed overnight with us.  For us as the first volunteers, staff and support staff, for all the challenges, there was a sense of a great adventure, both personally and as a movement.  We were open to experiencing first hand something of the need for social justice, of the vitality and difficulties of living in community with people we had not met before, of living with the strengths and limitations of few choices and of finding God amidst this, individually and together.  For all of us, 1987-88 remains both a rich and influential period, a touchstone and influence for today and the future.  Eddy’s phrase to us was, “It’s not about getting the right answers but the right questions!”  That’s all part of being ruined for life – in theological terms, being dead to the world and truly alive for God’s work, building a fairer more compassionate kingdom here, now.

Jesuit influence

The Jesuits have always used their limited resources to influence the social fabric by helping people to find God in all things and, because of their courage and approach, that influence has been phenomenal.  The BBC is currently running the 2008 Reith lectures on China and has highlighted the Society’s work, in the shape of Matteo Ricci SJ in 1580, as the first westerners to enter China.  Their impact there and China’s interest in the West because of that is still being felt today.  St Francis Xavier had the same goals when he went to India.  Here in this Church named after him, Bro Ken Vance SJ and the team are seeking to influence modern Liverpool and are hosting as well a special exhibition next month Held in Trust  on the work of the Society in the UK to influence the Capital of Culture.

And the Society is hosting tonight’s celebration as it has so generously supported JVC for 21 years financially and with its Jesuit members in spiritual development particularly.  Why?

It does this because it wants every volunteer, to do what Ricci and Xavier tried to do.  To go into the places where people are excluded from Jesus’ message, to learn from them and live along side them to change the world for the better.  I personally want to thank Fr Michael on behalf of his predecessors and the rest of the Society for continuing to ruin my former conventional life and help to make me part of the Jesuit movement.  I’m sure many of us who have gone through JVC feel the same.  The challenge we took up continues – but God doesn’t leave us alone.  It’s God’s work we are about to make a fairer Britain, where personal relationships are valued and not cheapened, where spirituality is respected as part of the whole compass of human experience and where people are encouraged to see the wisdom and joy in simplicity in a world teetering to the edge of catastrophe through consumerism-led climate change.

On behalf of my Rialto community, thanks for listening and staying ruined!

Ged Edwards was one of the first JVC volunteers in JVC Rialto 1987-88 in Liverpool.

European Volunteer Meeting BY AUSTEJA MOCKEVICIUTE

The European JVC volunteer meeting, “Discover strength and unity through diversity” was held in May 2008. JVC volunteers from Ireland, Germany, Great Britain, Slovakia, France and young people from Lithuania gathered in Vilnius (Lithuania) to share their experiences on social inclusion activities carried out in different parts of Europe, working with marginalised people and helping those who come from very diverse backgrounds.

Volunteers could discuss and analyse high unemployment rates, a decrease of equality of opportunity in education and employment in many countries, marginalisation, social exclusion and discrimination for many people who have skills but not opportunities and access to use them and feel fully-fledged members of the society they live in. Jesuit volunteers during the meeting could share examples of their work trying to make poor people’s voice heard and to advocate their interests. Volunteers try to engage more with society and become a bridge between those who are voiceless and those who have got power to make decisions affecting the lives of others. Volunteers shared ideas on how to stimulate people on the margins to engage more in society.

Each group prepared a presentation of social inclusion models used in their country and their placement. Those presentations had one issue in common – people from different backgrounds can be welcomed and accepted by non governmental and charitable organisations better then the formal institutions, which deal more with problems, forgetting about the person and his/her dignity.

The seminar activities brought about an understanding that social inclusion is achieved when all members of society can acknowledge, accept and implement their civil rights and duties, something significantly influenced by equal access to opportunity.

In diverse societies like the UK, France, Germany equal opportunities can be secured by activities based on principles of solidarity striving for successful integration into society through education, personal development and employment. Most people JVC volunteers work with have found it difficult to integrate into society, especially into formal systems, therefore synthesis of non-formal education and social services often is the key to successful integration, mentoring people with low self esteem and supporting them to discover their strength and engage it into positive activities.

The JVC volunteer meeting has broadened the understanding of social inclusion not just in the cities or countries represented but in wider Europe. The meeting was financed by Youth in Action Programme which is operated by the European Commission and aims to inspire a sense of active citizenship, solidarity and tolerance among young Europeans and to involve them in shaping our future.

Austeja Mockeviciute is a volunteer coordinator at JVC and a former volunteer; she comes from the lovely city of Vilnius in Lithuania

National Poverty Hearing by PATRICK HANNON

Organised by Church Action on Poverty, the National Poverty Hearing was held in London on 6th December 2006, the culmination of months of hard work. It gave the chance for those who experience poverty in the UK to take advantage of the platform they had been given to make their voices and views heard by top policy makers, church members, poverty campaigners and the general public alike. In attendance were esteemed figures such as Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks and David Lammy MP. But what did this second National Poverty Hearing achieve that the first – held in 1996 – could not? Were people who had recently experienced poverty communicating similar experiences to those who had been in poverty 10 years ago and were politicians and poverty campaigners prepared to listen to their message?

Nearly 500 people crammed into Methodist central Hall in London for the daylong event, including 17 travel weary but enthusiastic JVC volunteers. It was 10 years since the first National Poverty Hearing took place to try to come to terms with huge wealth inequality, unemployment and child poverty at home. So, is Britain so different today? Does poverty still exist? The answer to both those questions is undoubtedly yes. Contrast a Conservative government under John Major, just under 3 million unemployed and 1 in 3 children in households experiencing relative poverty with a Labour government that has brought in a minimum wage and set a timeline to eradicating child poverty by 2012. But if that sounds like a Blarite endorsement for the third way then a few more home truths need to be spoken:

• Consistent and deliberate persecution of asylum seekers through successive laws barring them from work and reducing still further any state or legal support
• Overpayments of benefits and tax credits to low income families which subsequently have to be paid back, plunging those families yet further into the mire
• Rising numbers of low (and medium!) income families who are increasingly facing huge amounts of debt
• And missing the first target towards eradicating child poverty in Britain by 2020

These are just a few of the hurdles Blair faces if he is to look towards the domestic agenda in trying to rescue his 10-year legacy. There is enough there to remind us that representative democracy is not a panacea for the problems of home grown poverty.

And yet, it is not just one man’s responsibility alone. Poverty campaigners from the major charities and pressure groups were reminded in an open mic session of the need to avoid patronising those on low incomes by claiming better budgeting should be part of a drive to promote education as a means to solving poverty. After all, how is it possible to budget for 4 children on £55 a week? Worse still was that 10 years on from the first National Poverty Hearing and very little progress has been made to even acknowledge the existence of urban poverty, let alone how to address it.

If anything, these comments were indicative of a tendency in Britain by political and economic power structures to speak to people rather than listen. It is reassuring that, at a local level at least, that may be about to change. The introduction of participatory budgeting and participatory democracy – albeit on a small scale currently – could herald a new dawn in terms of ordinary citizens deciding for themselves the spending priorities of local councils for the areas where they live.

“We will only have a socially just Britain when…a poor child and rich child born together in a maternity ward each have the same chances of fulfilling their potential. But meritocracy is not social justice: it just changes the people who are over or under privileged. Social justice is when the gap between the rich and the poor is narrow enough to allow children to rise and fall on the social ladder according to their abilities, without causing undue distress to those who slip down.”
Polly Toynbee, Chair at the 2006 National Poverty Hearing

So, was everyone present taking note? Well not everyone was present for a start. We were treated to some quite powerful presentations from Actors for Refugees. Some of the accounts they gave of first escaping one type of oppression abroad only to find themselves facing political oppression in the UK were harrowing and yet no Members of Parliament from the major political parties were around to hear. Conveniently, MPs like David Lammy (Labour), Stephen Timms (Labour) and Oliver Letwin (Conservative) only arrived later in order communicate their respective parties responses to the last 10 years. Nevertheless, the fact that the Conservatives even showed up marks a sea change from the 10 years ago when what mattered most was economic stability. Just like climate change, you don’t know if politicians are taking the issues seriously but they know they have to pay some serious lip service to issues like poverty.

HSBC and KPMG were not going to miss the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon. Each one presented moves in their respective business operations to introduce a “living wage” for all employees significantly above the minimum wage for workers across Britain. Such a move would allow employees to exist above the government’s poverty line without recourse to in-work benefits. But are these big corporations just the exception to the rule? Will the government follow suit by introducing such measures nationwide? It seems that they are tiptoeing along by only promising to raise the minimum wage to £5:52 in October 2007. That is well below the £6:80 (£7:05 in London) demanded by campaign group Church Action on Poverty.

If there was only one part of the National Poverty Hearing that grated with this JVC attendee it was the statement by Britain’s very own cardinal that poverty in Britain could only be alleviated, rather than eradicated altogether. This did not chime very well with Church Action on Poverty national co-ordinator Niall Cooper who challenged policy makers and the public in general to set about eradicating poverty at home by 2020. Is that a realistic target or just high-minded idealism that seeks to raise morale and spur on poverty campaigners in order to make more progress? With the launch of a Make Poverty History At Home campaign set to launch in 2008 it would seem that poverty campaigners, having begun to set the agenda abroad, are in no mood to miss this opportunity at home. With a probable general election in 2009 – and concentrated efforts being made to put poverty issues at the forefront of people’s minds – who would bet against them nearing the completion of their task by the time of the next National Poverty Hearing?
Patrick was a JVC volunteer 2006-7. He volunteered at Church Action on Poverty and the Booth Centre.