By Drew Shriner | Contributor
One of Taylor's newest clubs is also made up of some of Taylor's newest faces; a freshmen led group has teamed up to form a school chapter for International Justice Mission (IJM).
IJM serves in developing countries, and attempts to protect innocent individuals from being exploited. They work against slavery, sex trafficking, sexual violence, police brutality, land theft and citizens rights abuse.
"We're International Justice Mission, and we believe that justice for the poor is possible," said the IJM website, www.ijm.org.
Having done a freedom fast during the fall semester, the chapter hopes to host biweekly meetings and plan several other events to grow the chapter during the spring semester.
As an international organization, IJM does not currently work in the United States. However, freshman Bryant Barger, vice president of fundraising for Taylor's new chapter, believes Taylor's campus can assist IJM's mission through a three step process: advocacy, prayer and fundraising.
"The Taylor chapter is a platform that IJM uses," Barger said. "We just represent IJM as students. We're an arm of IJM."
Taylor's IJM chapter is primarily led by first-year Taylor students. Chapter founder and president Bree Bailey is a freshman, as are several of the vice presidents.
Senior Nathan Mortensen believes these new faces are addressing an issue Taylor's campus had been failing to address during his time at Taylor.
"In my past three years at Taylor, there has been a lack of action to accompany the awareness of social justice issues, and I hope that the new IJM chapter will help to fill this void on campus," Mortensen said.
Though the chapter is currently young and small, they hope to grow and add as many Taylor students as possible.
Their size and youth is not a problem to Barger, however. He firmly believes any little bit the chapter does can have a big impact and is important work they and IJM are doing.
"This is a very real problem, and anything we can do, as children of God, to stop this kind of thing is kingdom work, literally," Barger said. "I think that's what we're called to do as Christians, and, morally, I think it's the right thing to do, and IJM has saved thousands of lives just by doing what they're doing, and if we can be a small part of that, I think that's a beautiful thing."
The next chapter meeting is on March 7 at 8:30 p.m.
