Just Harvest continues to be guided by its founding mission and principles. These guiding ideas are built on the understanding that hunger is a symptom of poverty, and poverty is a product of economic and political injustice. Public policies frame the structure of our society, and it is through changing these policies that we can best address hunger and poverty.
Mission Statement: Just Harvest is a membership organization which promotes economic justice and works to influence public policy and to educate, empower, and mobilize the citizens of our community toward the elimination of hunger and poverty.
The following principles were written and adopted by Just Harvest's founding board and staff in 1987:
Just Harvest advocates and works toward policies which:
- meet food and other human needs on an emergency and on-going basis
- foster an end to poverty and hunger, and to the conditions which maintain and perpetuate poverty and hunger;
- foster social, political and economic equality;
- protect the economic security, dignity and rights of low-income people;
- maximize participation of poor people in the matters which affect their lives;
- promote/advocate international policies designed to meet basic human needs of poor people, and to maximize participation by those people;
- empower people to act in their own behalf.
Such policies include, but are not limited to, policies which:
- work toward adequate funding for food and other basic needs;
- make structural changes in existing programs to insure access to adequate assistance;
- insure that programs provide high quality service;
- insure that privacy, dignity and rights of poor people are respected;
- change the priorities that lead to hunger and poverty.
Just Harvest is committed to working for public policy reform; resolved to carrying out that commitment by monitoring and responding to policies and legislation which affect hunger, on whatever level.
Our advocacy work shall focus on national, state, local and international issues.