Citizens For Social Justice

"We must be the change we wish to see." 
~ Mohandas Gandhi

Our Mission

Citizens for Social Justice is a non-profit corporation founded and run by University of Florida students.  It's mission is twofold: to provide meaningful opportunities for service and civic engagement within the University of Florida campus community; and to analyze, and develop innovative solutions to, local social problems.  In carrying out this mission, Citizens for Social Justice serves as a hub for scholarly research on local social justice issues, an informational link link between students and service opportunities, and the sponsor of an innovative transitional housing and homeless rehabilitation program.

Projects for Social Change

Citizens for Social Justice carries out its mission through three innovative Projects for Social Change:

The  Golden Door  is a student-run transitional housing and educational rehabilitation program for homeless individuals in Gainesville, Florida.  The program provides free medical services, vocational training, job placement, counseling, and educaitonal mentoring in the areas of: Financial Literacy, Goal Discovery, Communication Skills, Health Education, Rights Literacy, Arts Mentoring, and Pet Therapy.  The Golden Door program was developed by students and faculty members at the University of Florida, and aims to provide a comprehensive support system for its previously homeless residents.  Through the program, mentors and residents work together in creating a structured path out of homelessness for each individual resident.

The Social Justice Research  fellowship program fosters scholarship on issues of social justice, and improves intellectual discourse on local issues of poverty by engaging students and faculty throughout the University. Citizens for Social Justice is dedicated to fostering the next generation of scholarship on social problems, and uses its research to bolster solutions to those problems.

The Gharmony service networking resource is a web-based resource providing users with information about Gainesville-based service organizations.  The resource provides information about opportunities for users to engage in service, bridging the "town-gown divide" by linking community organizations with student volunteers, and allowing student and community service organizations to work more closely together.  Gharmony also links student service organizations with one another, preventing duplicate efforts and allowing collaboration between like-minded groups.  Beyond serving as a purely informational resource, beginning in the Fall of 2009, Gharmony will provide grant-writing assistance and organizational development consultations for student service organizations.

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