What Exactly is Jubilee? (Part II)
In an earlier post, I wrote a bit about how Jubilee is structured and what its self-identification as an Intentional Christian Service Community means. Today I'm going to delve a little deeper into how things at Jubilee run. While most people think of Jubilee primarily as an organization that helps refugees, for the purposes of explaining how things at Jubilee run on a daily basis, it might be more helpful to think of Jubilee as a group of people that are choosing to live and work together. The fact that some of that work includes refugees isn't the main point of this post.
Any group of people living together needs some sort of structure, at Jubilee the core of that structure are the Partners. These are folks that are committed to living at Jubilee for at least 2 years or till God calls them elsewhere. They will have been at Jubilee at least a year before they make the decision, along with the community's feedback, to become a Partner. They keep their individual assets (mostly), but there are certain things, like vehicles, that individual Partners don't own. Instead, Jubilee owns about ten different vehicles that the Partners and other staff use for work and recreational purposes. Currently there are 16 Partners at Jubilee, and they have the most responsibility for organizing Jubilee's life together. The Partners have a weekly business meeting where they decide anything from whether an old tree should get cut down, to if new buildings should be built at Jubilee. The Partners are the long term core of Jubilee, and many have been here for over a decade, they provide stability for the community, especially with the high turnover of refugees and volunteers.
A step back from the Partners, there are Apprentices and Novices. These are both medium term commitments of 1-2 years, with the expectation that after being an Apprentice or Novice for 2-3 years, someone still interested in being at Jubilee would consider becoming a Partner. Novices don't have a set "term", their time commitment to Jubilee is open ended, and they are in the process of discerning whether partnership is something they wish to pursue. Novices will eventually either decide to become Partners, or decide to move on to other things outside of Jubilee.
Apprentices have a more defined time commitment, 1 year. At the end of their year, Apprentices can either extend for an additional year, or become a Novice if they wish to start thinking about Partnership.
Apprentices and Novices both sit in on the Partners' business meetings, and all have job roles within the community and autonomy to fulfill their job roles and schedule their own work time. However, they do not vote on issues and are excluded from a handful of Partner meetings.
Finally, there are Volunteers, who come for 3-5 month terms, and mostly work at the school teaching English (along with a few other work roles depending on interest). Volunteers have scheduled work time, and aside from teaching, are usually working with a Partner/Novice/Apprentice. They have little formal input on the decision making process, since their short time commitment to Jubilee means they likely won't be around for the outcome of major decisions.
So, that is the Jubilee structure in a nutshell. For all staff, there are shared lifestyle expectations, including a limited use of technology for entertainment, hanging clothing out to dry, and other things that Jubilee feels promote a more sustainable and relational lifestyle.
Nate
