Justice Formation contributors
Aaron Alford is from Ontario, Canada. A former comedian and sketch-comedy performer, Aaron worked as a missionary in Youth With A Mission (YWAM) for over twenty years. From 2003 to 2017, he worked with close friends in Modesto, California to build Christ-centered, "creative, compassionate community" through simple, relationship-based models of ministry. In 2017, Aaron began seminary training and formation to become a Roman Catholic priest for the Diocese of Gallup dioceseofgallup.org. He is currently studying at St John Vianney Theological Seminary https://sjvdenver.edu in Denver, Colorado (and he is loving it!).
Aaron has authored, and coauthored two books:
Sarah Banks lives in rural, northeast Ohio. She is passionate about living a slow paced, simple lifestyle with her husband and pets in her local community . She spends a lot of time outdoors, photographing macro details in nature and landscapes. She has worked as a nanny, florist, barista, house cleaner and runs a small photography business on the side. Sarah has served in local missions and has a deep desire to contribute to the flourishing of the places and people around her.
Britta Badour, better known as Britta B., is a Toronto-based spoken word poet, performer, emcee, voice actor and teaching artist.
Her works have featured in print, in sound and onstage across North America in notable spheres such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, CBC Arts: Poetic License, The Walrus Talks, TEDx and The Stephen Lewis Foundation. She is an alumna of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity Spoken Word Residency and 2018 Toronto Arts Council Leaders Lab Fellow.
As an artist educator, Britta facilitates artist-training seminars, poetry workshops and social justice programs in partnership with organizations like JAYU, Poetry In Voice, Prologue Performing Arts, League of Canadian Poets and The Power Plant.
Britta is currently a Creative Writing MFA candidate at University of Guelph.
Gilad Cohen is an Israeli-Canadian Toronto-based artist, photographer, podcaster, public speaker, and advocate for human rights.
Since 2008, Gilad has worked as a community mobilizer with a focus on connecting audiences to urgent and compelling stories through multimedia arts.
In 2012, Gilad founded JAYU, an award-winning Toronto-based charity that serves the arts community through the annual Human Rights Film Festival, The Hum, a human rights podcast which he produces and co-hosts, as well as the iAM Program, an initiative that provides arts and social justice mentorship to more than 200 equity-seeking youth from across the GTA each year.
He is an alumna of the Toronto Arts Council Leaders Lab and the Rothschild Fellowship at Cambridge University in the UK.
All photos on this website are Gilad's beautiful work.
Jimmy Sustar is a musician, story-teller/presenter, and a pastoral, relief and development missionary specializing in child-protection, family and community healing, and leadership development.
Creator of this website, and founder/director of The Commons; a relational, community-based redemption project, he believes in making right and good relationship the basis of every endeavor of work and process.
His life focus and work is the exploration of the heart of God, being an advocate for the poor, a peace-activist toward justice awareness, and teaching others to do and be the same.
Much of his formation is from spending time in community, and collaborative leadership in relational ministry among the street community of Modesto, CA with Youth With A Mission. He has lived and worked in Thailand on the border of Myanmar (Burma) focused on family protection, advocacy for undocumented Burmese migrant families, and relationship building/networking grassroots education and development.
Jimmy is furthering development of partnerships and focus in outdoor expeditionary opportunities for leadership development in youth, and burnout-prevention/recovery for leaders.
He loves being a husband to his wife, and a father to his four children. He enjoys being outside, backpacking, hiking, reading, dreaming, and hanging out and laughing hard with his family and friends.
He has two albums of songs written in response to his life's work available for listening:
Chris Whitler lives in Modesto, California with his wife Amie and a full house of youngins.
He is the activity director for a network of residential care facilities for people with mental illness. He is also doing supportive work for Youth With A Mission, Modesto (YWAM) https://www.ywammodesto.org and part of the pastoral team for a small non-denominational congregation. He is in way over his head.
He sings a little:
And he likes to make silly videos:
Chris is doing his best to find and participate in the good, the true and the beautiful....and the funny.