Immigrant Justice Initiative
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How to reach us with questions or to volunteer: You can email us at [email protected]
How to reach us with questions or to volunteer: You can email us at [email protected]
iwalk with immigrants 2025
Walk With Immigrants Walking Challenge
The Immigrant Justice Initiative invites you to join us in our annual walking challenge to share the experience of our asylum-seekers, some of whom walked as far as 1600 or 2400 miles from their home countries to our borders.
Take a moment to really try and Imagine the conditions that would make a walk like that seem worth the risk. More than one of the families we have worked with traveled those distances with small children, and more than one family also had to make the difficult decision to leave children behind who could not make the journey.
With this walk we want to acknowledge that initial journey.
You may already walk every day, or maybe you've been meaning to start. You can track your miles using this online form as an individual, as a family, or as a team -- like a covenant group, chalice circle or church club. We'll sell buttons you can wear to show you are walking with immigrants. Every week during the challenge we'll have a table at coffee hour with a display showing how far we've collectively walked, and if there’s interest we’re thinking about some group walks after church. Let's see if together, in one month, we can walk as far as one of our asylum-seekers walked to reach us.
Thank you for walking with us, during this challenge and throughout our years walking with immigrants.
WATCH FOR ANNOUNCEMENT OF 2025 CHALLENGE - WEEKLY BULLETIN AND TABLING
The Immigrant Justice Initiative invites you to join us in our annual walking challenge to share the experience of our asylum-seekers, some of whom walked as far as 1600 or 2400 miles from their home countries to our borders.
Take a moment to really try and Imagine the conditions that would make a walk like that seem worth the risk. More than one of the families we have worked with traveled those distances with small children, and more than one family also had to make the difficult decision to leave children behind who could not make the journey.
With this walk we want to acknowledge that initial journey.
You may already walk every day, or maybe you've been meaning to start. You can track your miles using this online form as an individual, as a family, or as a team -- like a covenant group, chalice circle or church club. We'll sell buttons you can wear to show you are walking with immigrants. Every week during the challenge we'll have a table at coffee hour with a display showing how far we've collectively walked, and if there’s interest we’re thinking about some group walks after church. Let's see if together, in one month, we can walk as far as one of our asylum-seekers walked to reach us.
Thank you for walking with us, during this challenge and throughout our years walking with immigrants.
WATCH FOR ANNOUNCEMENT OF 2025 CHALLENGE - WEEKLY BULLETIN AND TABLING
share the plate 2025 |
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In Fall 2025 our church congregation will donate towards our Immigrant Justice work. Stay tuned for updates.
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November 2024: I Walk With Immigrants Celebration at Flying Biscuit
To celebrate the success of Our Walking Challenge last fall we met up and enjoyed brunch at the Flying Biscuit. This second iteration of the event was a great success in building awareness of the Immigrant Justice Initiative's work with asylum-seekers. The Flying Biscuit was also able to partner with us and provide IJI with 20% of proceeds from the brunch- THANK YOU Flying Biscuit! We walked a collective 1,632 miles, and we grew our newsletter and volunteer lists. September 2023: I Walk With Immigrants final total: 2698 miles We wrapped up the I Walk With Immigrants challenge with a total of 2698 miles collectively walked. That's 300 more than our second threshold of 2400, the distance our asylum-seeker Yeimy went from El Salvador to the California border. (The first threshold we had set for ourselves was 1600 miles, the distance from Honduras to the Texas border.) Thank you so much for your part in the challenge. We enjoyed watching the miles mount up, and all the engagement from our walkers was heartening. We had three or four families taking part, and some individuals who were training for long hikes or who walked a consistent four or five miles a day. About 45 people or groups were logging miles, adding up to 50 or 60 people. Some folks included notes about where they walked or thanked us for our work. Our main purpose was to raise awareness of the work our church is doing, housing and supporting asylum-seeking immigrants as they build lives in their new home. We talked to a lot of folks while tabling who didn't know about that work, and we added names to our newsletter mailing list and our volunteer list. And of course, we ended with a pupusa party on Sunday the 22nd and prizes for "most miles walked" went to: Individual: Nancy Mayer, 190 miles Family: Jonathan and Victoria Ledford, 233 miles Team: Two Wimmin Walking, Liz Ryan and Nan Jekubovitch, 167 miles. We're thankful for the warm response, and for the new connections we made through this challenge. Thank you for walking with us on the challenge and continuing to do as the community keeps walking with asylum-seekers. DURING OUR WALK WITH IMMIGRANTS EVENT MONTH, TANDEM RESTAURANT SELLS A SPECIAL COCKTAIL WHICH BENEFITS OUR GROUP
Many thanks to everyone who took the time to enjoy an "Oscar" cocktail at Tandem during July and August to benefit our work! We raised $380 to support our IJI work, and these photos show we had some fun in the process. |
April 2023
We received a beautiful thank-you note from El Refugio for the congregation's generous giving to our Share The Plate for them in February. We are so proud to be doing this work hand-in-hand with a caring congregation. Here's the note:
We received a beautiful thank-you note from El Refugio for the congregation's generous giving to our Share The Plate for them in February. We are so proud to be doing this work hand-in-hand with a caring congregation. Here's the note:
March 2023, 2024 AND 2025
For the Community Church Day of Service in March, IJI takes a team to Frank Porter Graham Elementary School, where the children of our Manse guests have benefited from a solid bilingual program for Spanish speakers. In fact, we had several current and former FPG students as enthusiastic guides as the team split up to pick up litter around the grounds, weed the school vegetable garden and plant two flowerbeds.
For the Community Church Day of Service in March, IJI takes a team to Frank Porter Graham Elementary School, where the children of our Manse guests have benefited from a solid bilingual program for Spanish speakers. In fact, we had several current and former FPG students as enthusiastic guides as the team split up to pick up litter around the grounds, weed the school vegetable garden and plant two flowerbeds.
September 2022
On Sept. 23, Emma's Revolution performed a benefit concert, "You Are Welcome Here,” for the Immigrant Justice Initiative.
Thanks to all the volunteers from IJI and Side With Love, we raised not only money, but also awareness of our work with immigrants . We had information tables and a reception prior to the concert which some of our Manse guests were able to attend.
Emma's Revolution is an American folk music and social activist duo, consisting of songwriters Pat Humphries and Sandy Opatow. Named after activist Emma Goldman, the group has performed at protests for peace, women's rights, labor rights, environmental protection, and other progressive causes. Their songs have been covered by various choral groups, including church choirs and labor choruses. We were thrilled that they came for this performance and drew in some concertgoers from the community. It was a rousing performance. Many thanks!
Our commitment
On February 18, 2018, Community Church of Chapel Hill voted to become a sanctuary congregation by passing the following motion:
"Be it resolved that we, the members of The Community Church of Chapel Hill, Unitarian Universalist, publicly declare our intent to be a Sanctuary Church. Before officially hosting someone in our space, we will seek to build a relationship with the sanctuary guest so that each party feels comfortable that this would be a fruitful and safe undertaking, respecting the needs and boundaries of both the individual and the congregation. Further, we dedicate ourselves to educate and activate our congregation and community, to amplify and respond to the voices of immigrant leaders, and to speak out against discrimination towards marginalized people. The Sanctuary and Immigrant Support Ministry, with and through the Minister, will provide periodic reports to the Board of Trustees regarding actions taken pursuant to this resolution."
We have since expanded our commitment to include supporting the legal, medical and personal needs of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in relationship with the Community Church.
our Team
