Unitarian Universalist Church of Evansville

Love is the spirit of our church. Service is its prayer.

CAJE

Update:

Hundreds turned out to the Annual Community Problems Assembly hosted at Holy Redeemer on November 11 to hear testimonies of community members faced with the severe community issue of the lack of affordable rental housing. Mayor Terry was invited to give an update on her efforts concerning this issue.

Also, on the agenda were testimonies around the issue of early childhood reading and literacy!

For more information about CAJE in the greater Evansville area and the process for choosing issues to pursue each year, please see Our Process — CAJE (greaterevansvillecaje.org)

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The Unitarian Universalist Church of Evansville is a member of CAJE.

Congregations Acting for Justice and Empowerment (CAJE) is a nonprofit group of 26 local faith communities, representing people from all walks of life in Vanderburgh, Posey and Warrick counties in southwestern Indiana.

We’re Protestants, Catholics, Hindus, Muslims, and Unitarian Universalists, working together to create a more equitable community for all people.

We are process-driven. We work methodically to identify problems and research their causes. We develop practical, evidence-based solutions to systemic injustice. And we empower people to hold officials accountable for true, long-lasting change.

We’re not simply advocates for needed change—we are change-makers. And we’re making a difference.

Mission Statement

The mission of the CAJE organization is to draw together people of faith to act powerfully to address local community issues through processes of relationship building, direct action, and negotiation with decision-makers.

History

CAJE was founded in 2003 and held its first action on February 23, 2004 with 700 people in attendance. At that meeting, Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel agreed to work on ways to improve housing code enforcement. He restructured the department so that the entire city is now being inspected and he increased the number of housing code enforcement inspectors from five to eight.

A few years later, the organization got the Vanderburgh County Council to include a new community dental clinic in their 2006 health department budget. This clinic opened on June 26, 2006 and has an annual budget of $285,000. This clinic supplies dental services to all persons with limited resources for dental care.

As CAJE enters its third decade of working for systemic change, we give thanks for the wins we have achieved… and for the people who came together from different faith traditions to found our organization.

Source: Greater Evansville CAJE