Description
Winner of the 2012 Best of Wheaton Gamon Award for Small Nonprofit of the Year!
JUST is an acronym for Justice, Understanding, Service and Teaching and we enable life change. For the past 25 years, JUST has delivered educational programs to male and female inmates inside the DuPage County Jail. The purpose of JUST of DuPage is to contribute to the long term health of the community through programs focused on behavioral change, education, and family unification. Specifically, the goals of JUST programs are:
- To empower each inmate residing in the DuPage County Jail to pursue positive life changes.
- Inject empathy and hope into an environment characterized by despair.
- Improve the potential for a healthier future in the communities to which inmates will be released.
- Provide support and resources to inmates through community collaborations.
JUST takes a holistic approach to education and behavior change with a focus on four areas of life balance: mind (academic education), body (addiction education), spirit (spiritual enrichment), and emotions (life skills).
Our programs include:
Addiction Education
- Substance abuse counseling
- Into to 12 Steps
- Relapse Prevention
- Partner with Alcoholics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous
Academic Education
- Partner with College of Dupage
- GED
- ESL
- ABE
- Partner with Literacy DuPage for reading improvement
Spiritual Enrichment
- Partner with many church communities
- Bible Study (English and Spanish)
- Advanced Bible Study
- Bible Study Correspondence
- Purpose Driven Life
- Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim worship
Life Skills
- Anger Management
- Decision Making
- Positive Parenting
- Financial Literacy
- Basic computer
With four staff and 100 volunteers we educate over 30,000 inmates each year. JUST offers many volunteer opportunities working both inside and outside the jail to help reduce the ever increasing recidivism rate in DuPage County and build, healthy and safe communities.
