Why Choose to be a Jesuit Alumni Volunteer?

Members of the JAV program serve Cristo Rey Jesuit High School for two years. The JAV program offers a life-time worth of memories, meaningful relationships, and the opportunity to impact lives.  JAVs truly live out the Ignatian moto, “For the greater glory of God.”  How does it all happen?

Hearing the Call to Serve
Volunteers perform a variety of services for Cristo Rey. As Father Foley used to say, "The Volunteers are the backbone of Cristo Rey." The goal of the program is to match the needs of the school with the interests, gifts, and talents of the volunteers. All volunteers help drive students to their Corporate Internship work assignment in the morning or afternoon. Volunteers each teach an average of two and a half sections, and typically are assigned two different content areas. Volunteers in the past have taught social studies, English, computers & keyboarding, drama, civics, economics, expository writing, math, art, science, U.S. history, music and religion. Volunteers have also extensively worked with the Corporate Internship Program, the Development Office, Campus Ministry, Retreat Programs and the Counseling Office. Almost all volunteers coach sports or moderate extra-curricular activities like Student Council, the Drama Club, the Cristo Rey Spring Break Service Trip, the Tufts Model UN program, and the school choir.

Living in One Community
Volunteers live in intentional community with other members of the program and embrace a lifestyle of simplicity during their tenure.  Such a commitment to community life involves mutual respect, an attitude of service, and consideration for all areas of community life.  The Jesuit Alumni Volunteer House is located on South Wolcott Street less than a minute walk from the front door of Cristo Rey Jesuit HS.  The volunteers split the responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, and maintaining the volunteer residence.  Intentional community, however, means much more than this.  JAVs share their daily triumphs and failures at community meals, they work together on projects within the school, and they build relationships between one another through community activities, retreats, and reflection times.  Intentional community living is a profound, unique, and challenging way to approach service with and for others.

A Commitment to Simple Living
The primary responsibility for simple living rests with the volunteer.  It is a clear objective of the JAV Program that all aspects of the volunteer’s service be charged with a commitment simple living.  This has been defined as seeking an understanding of sustainability in one’s own life and the life of the community, as living within one’s means, as making concerted efforts to conserve and reuse, and as actively engaging in the discernment process to make such determinations.  While it is clear that this is no simple task, it is our hope that the community can engage in their struggle to live simply as a community and its members can explore what it means to live simply in the context of Christian spirituality and the volunteer experience.    

Growing Spiritually & Personally
Life at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School is about much more than education.  As a school in the Jesuit, Catholic tradition, Cristo Rey and the Jesuit Alumni Volunteer Program encourages each volunteer to find ways to embrace a personal and communal spirituality that is life giving.  Volunteers may choose to engage in communal prayer times, community Mass, spiritual direction, and retreats as they come to understand the ways in which God calls each one of us into deeper relationships.