Father Gregory Boyle, the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, will be the special guest speaker as JustDane (formerly Madison-area Urban Ministry) celebrates 50 years of advocacy in the greater Madison community and beyond on Thursday, April 11 at the Madison College Mitby Theater.
Father Boyle and three of his “Homeboys” will speak at the JustDane’s 50th Anniversary Celebration which will be emceed by Dane County Circuit Judge Everett Mitchell, who had previously served as the associate director of Madison-area Urban Ministry. This will be JustDane’s first big in-person event since their Partners for Change Luncheon in 2019 before the pandemic.
“From 6-7 p.m., we’re going to have live jazz music and hors d’oeuvres. And then from 7-8:30 p.m. we will have the program. Honorable Judge Mitchell will be our emcee and we have a couple of awards we’ll be giving out,” Linda Ketcham, the executive director of JustDane, tells Madison365.
The special guest will be Father Boyle, a Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry program in the world. Father Boyle has received the California Peace Prize and has been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. In 2014, the White House named Boyle a “Champion of Change.”
Based in Los Angeles, Homeboy Industries provides hope and job training for formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated people so they can redirect their lives and become contributing members of society. Ketcham says that this correlates greatly with the work JustDane has been doing in Wisconsin, particularly with its Just Bakery and reentry programs.
“We are excited to have Father Boyle at the event and to hear more about the powerful work they are doing,” Ketcham says. “Father Boyle will have a meet and greet the day before and we’ll have a special event with our staff and some invited guests … an opportunity to meet closer up and in person and ask questions and engage. I think our staff is pretty excited about it, as are some of our guests that we’ve invited to that.”
(Photo: JustDane)
Originally created as a social justice and social service organization in 1971, Madison-area Urban Ministry (MUM) would change its name to JustDane in 2020 to reflect its expanded reach.
“We are excited to be celebrating 50 years and we’re very excited about this event. I think it’s going to be a good time. We haven’t celebrated big like this for quite a fair number of years now,” Ketcham says. “I’m looking forward to seeing people that I haven’t seen in a while and it will be a chance to celebrate 50 years of work, but also to think about and get inspired about what the next 50 years might look like.”
(Photo: MUM archives)
Ketcham has been with Just Dane for 18 years. She took over for longtime MUM executive director Mary Kay Baum in March of 2006.
“We have made progress over the years, but, certainly, we still have a lot of the same issues. The racial disparities, the incarceration rate is way too high, the crimeless revocation rate is still way too high,” Ketcham says. “The issues continue and we continue to work on them with other organizations in the community and in the state.
“Our advocacy work continues in the areas of homelessness, too. We continue to be an incubator and fiscal agent for some amazing groups,” she adds.
Just Dane has started innovative programs over the years like Just Bakery, Just Connections, Journey Home, Peer Support, Circles of Support, the Healing House and more.
Just Bakery is a 16-week vocational and employment training program specifically designed to prepare men and women returning to the community after incarceration to work in commercial bakeries.
Healing House is an 8-bed facility, providing 24/7 recuperative care by medically-trained staff and volunteers for up to 28 days. Until the Healing House opened on July 9, 2019, there was no safe place for families experiencing homelessness to go when a member of the family needed to prepare for a medical procedure, or to recuperate after childbirth or hospitalization.
“Healing House is still the only nationally recuperative medical respite for families experiencing homelessness,” Ketcham says.
“We’ve added quite a few initiatives over the years. We now have a bail fund. We’ve grown from a staff back in 2006 of about eight full-time staff to the 36 staff we have now. We’ve grown quite a bit,” she adds.
“Even though we’re a local agency, some of the things that we’re doing ripple out and have rippled out across the country in terms of what other states and other programs are looking to do.”
The plan in the near future, Ketcham says, is to launch a capital campaign.
“There’s some exciting things that in the next year we’ll be sharing about some new collaborations,” she says.
In the meantime, Ketcham is looking forward to the big JustDane’s 50th Anniversary Celebration. Tickets can be purchased here.
“Tickets are $20 for students. We have a great line-up and we think it’s going to be a lot of fun,” Ketcham says. “If people just want to come here and hear Father Boyle, they can contact our office and RSVP.”
For those who can’t make the event, donations to JustDane are always welcome, adds Ketcham, to help continue the work and the advocacy for the next 50 years.
Tickets are still available for JustDane’s 50th Anniversary Celebration Event. For more information, click here.
