EVERYBODY'S CHALLENGE - Jesuit Refugee Service | USA

What is essential to JRS?
A statement drawn up following discussion during the in-service seminar
held in Kigali in August, 1995, around the question, “What do you regard
as essential to JRS?”
To join JRS is to embark on a journey of faith in the company of
refugees. Normally we act in international teams with an aim to
build up local partners. Our desire is to offer personal, flexible and
effective service to those uprooted from their countries and families,
especially the most vulnerable. Planning is essential and starts with
asking the refugees about their lives and needs, it implies analysis
of the causes and politics of their displacement and creative yet realistic
assessments of our own best contributions. Further discernment and
renewed planning follow evaluations of our actions, on which in
turn new engagements are built.
We try to be loyal to a wide network of partners, around the world
and locally, among them the refugees whom we accompany. Transparent
communications and reliable information are essential for
the smooth functioning and growth of individuals and teams in the
now extensive JRS network. We try to build a spirit of community,
discernment and cooperation in our teams. JRS needs a reliable management
structure, good leadership and careful personnel support
in order to be an effective community of service.
JRS is ready to collaborate with all persons, communities and
organisations which similarly seek the immediate and long term
good of refugees. Without in any way proselytising, we prefer to
build up the resources of the local church that it might continue like
minded service. Founded by the Jesuit Order which continues to
take a responsibility for it, JRS is also charged with animating communities
and institutions associated with the Jesuits that they might
develop, whether in their own name or through JRS, direct and competent
services to the forcibly displaced.
JRS’ style of service is human and spiritual, seeking the long
term good of the refugees, while not neglecting needs that are immediate
or urgent. Our service is pastoral and educational, most
often with a training component. The refugees are credible and
poignant witnesses to the need for justice in the world today. JRS
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