The Vision

In 2010 Auburn Seminary gathered a diverse panel of women religious leaders to reflect on the question, "how will women change the world in the twenty-first century?" An intentionally provocative and open-ended inquiry, the spirit of the conversation was summed up when after nearly two hours of story-telling, analyzing, and strategizing, African-American LGBT activist Bishop Yvette Flunder proclaimed, "we have the wherewithal, sisters, to bring life out of death!"

Inspired by the beautiful urgency of these words, the Auburn Generosity and Gender Justice Initiative was formed. Building on Auburn's nearly two-hundred year old commmitment to equip bold and resilient leaders to respond to the injustices of the times with courage, determination and innovation, Generosity and Gender Justice engages the particular contributions and capacities women of faith and spirit bring to the larger social justice movement.

The Purpose

Generosity and Gender Justice exists to cultivate and unleash the power of women faith leaders to usher in a new era of social change and transformation. By offering cutting edge programming for justice-seeking women leaders across lines of faith, class, race and generation, Generosity and Gender Justice works to affect deep and lasting transformations of the systems and structures that undermine full human flourishing, and to advance platforms, create quantifiable change and leverage shared values for a more peaceful, inclusive, generous and just world.

Generosity and Gender Justice encompasses five distinctive and highly interconnected projects. United by Auburn's belief that twenty-first century leaders must be:
 

• spiritually grounded,
• intellectually rigorous,
• wise about money,
• bridging divides,
• entreprenuerial,
• pursuing justice,
• courageous in the face of conflict,
• resilient and media savvy,

each project is designed to help women confront the unique challenges they face toward the realization of these core capacities, while drawing upon the deep reserviors of historical and experiential knowledge diverse communities of women have long brought to the table of activism and movement building.

The work of each of GGJ's five projects is focused on building and strengthening the capacity of women leaders to excel in at least three or more of the nine Auburn leader capacities. Taken together, the programs of Generosity and Gender Justice equip women in all nine leadership development areas to cultivate and increasingly strong, informed and activist current and next generation of women leaders ready to trouble the waters and heal the world.

Generosity and Gender Justice shares its learning, tools and best practices with religious institutions, non-profits, businesses, philanthropic organizations, activists, and other leaders looking for new ways to create and sustain justice-based activism.