JVC Northwest

Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest engages women and men in a transforming experience of full-time volunteer service. Jesuit Volunteers serve 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.

A year of service, a world of difference.

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.

SPIRITUALITY/REFLECTION: A core component of the JVC Northwest year is the opportunity for Jesuit Volunteers to explore and deepen their spiritual lives. Their journey is part of a life-long process that can be simultaneously comforting and unsettling, joyous and painful. The volunteers are “contemplatives in action,” engaging in the Jesuit Ignatian tradition of discernment and reflection in relation to social and ecological justice. This reflection is an opportunity for the volunteers to integrate the variety of experiences throughout their year of service.

SIMPLE LIVING: JVC Northwest challenges each Jesuit Volunteer to live a simple and reflective lifestyle, an alternative way to living in a consumer society. JVC Northwest invites volunteers to integrate their faith by serving with and living among those who experience poverty and oppression. This helps volunteers 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 living simply opens them up to a more joyful way of life, appreciating small wonders that often go unnoticed in everyday life.

COMMUNITY: Jesuit Volunteers live with one another in intentional communities. 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.

SOCIAL JUSTICE: JVC Northwest is committed to working for social and ecological justice and structural change. JVC Northwest encourages the empowerment of people who live on the margins of society through volunteer placements. Through service and reflection on lived experiences, JVs examine the causes of oppression and look for ways to bring about justice in our world.