Collaborations
Ask marginalized neighbors. They will tell you that today’s status quo systems of care are failing them. Some are breaking under the weight of unmet need. Some are poorly engineered, serving administrators more than the people they claim to serve. Others were deliberately built to enfranchise the privileged and disenfranchise everyone else. Systems of care will only work justly when their design and operation center the needs of those they were built to support.
We envision a Vermont in which the needs of the marginalized are no longer subordinated to the needs of the elite caste and the privileged. A Vermont where every neighbor is seen, valued, and held. Where “freedom and unity” mean something for all of us, not just some.
What most nonprofits call “programs,” we call collaborations. We build them one connection, one relationship at a time. We collaborate with those most committed to dismantling harmful systems and building equitable ones. This is hard work. History shows that most privileged folks enfranchised in the status quo prioritize their own comfort first. Bending the arc of that history toward justice will require love-centered values, courage, a transformative spirit, and a coming together of justice-seekers committed to change.
Green Mountain Justice’s Neighbor Care Ecosystem
Neighbor Care is the heart of Green Mountain Justice. Not a program. An ecosystem. A living network of relationships grounded in the simple, radical conviction that every neighbor is equally and inherently worthy.
We catch neighbors who are falling through the cracks. We come alongside them. We listen. We connect. We help where we can with the practical shortfalls of life on the edge. Rent. Groceries. Transportation. Kids’ clothes. A meal. We assess needs alongside our neighbors and open connections to the compassionate services of our community partners.
But the purpose of this work isn’t the assistance. It’s the relationship. We prioritize our relationships above the bureaucratic, transactional aspects of our interactions. We work with our neighbors, not for them.
Our Neighbor Care ecosystem comes alive through three interwoven collaborations: the Neighbors’ Table, the Neighbor Matters Council, and Neighbor Care Neighbors.
Neighbors’ Table
In stressful and divisive times, we need spaces where we can connect authentically with one another. The GMJ Neighbors’ Table is our answer. It’s a “third space.” Not home, not work, but somewhere we can come as our full selves and know we belong.
The Table centers the needs of those facing life’s greatest challenges. We create space for authentic connection through mutual care, deep listening, and beloved community. Every voice matters. Every story has value. We gather monthly at Fenn House at Champlain Valley UU Society in Middlebury, with hybrid access for neighbors joining virtually.
Whether you’re someone navigating life’s challenges or someone called to walk alongside others in solidarity, you belong at our table. Every voice matters, every story has value, and together we’re building beloved community one conversation, one connection, one caring act at a time. For information about upcoming gatherings, contact us or follow our updates on the Caring & Connecting page.
Neighbor Matters Council
Justice does not happen without prophets. People brave enough to speak the truth in systems that have comforted some at the expense of others. People who have lived what others only study or debate. The Neighbor Matters Council is where those voices live at Green Mountain Justice.
Council members are neighbors who know firsthand what hunger, housing insecurity, and oppression feel like. What poverty does to a family. What it means to be ignored by systems that were supposed to help. They don’t advise from a distance. They speak from the inside.
We believe the most important question in justice work isn’t only “What do people need?” It’s “Who gets to answer that question?” The Council is the roots of our grassroots organization. Its members tell us when we’re getting it right. They tell us when we’re not. They help us speak in ways that actually reach people who are struggling.
Gathered around our shared commitment to love as a force for justice, the Council shapes our priorities, informs our advocacy, and anchors our work in lived reality. They hold us accountable. They are listened to. they are, not just for what they have survived.
We are honored by their wisdom and generosity.
Neighbor Care Neighbors
Neighbor Care Neighbors (NCNs) are the relational backbone of GMJ. Other organizations would call them volunteers. We see them as neighbors choosing to spend their privilege through generosity of presence and resources.
Neighbor Care Neighbors are trained community members who journey alongside our most vulnerable neighbors—those facing housing insecurity, intersectional impoverishment, discrimination, and life’s greatest challenges. These volunteers provide more than referrals or resources; they offer presence, dignity, and the comfort of knowing somebody truly cares.
They offer something most systems can’t: presence. Not referrals. Not paperwork. Not advice from a distance. Real, ongoing relational connection with people the world has too often discarded.
Our NCNs receive trauma-responsive orientation in deep listening, cultural humility, and coming-alongside presence. They get comfortable with discomfort. They confront their own privilege and biases. They learn to listen without fixing or advising. They witness suffering without turning away.
This isn’t charity. It’s justice work. By getting proximate to those who are suffering, our Neighbor Care Neighbors gain insights crucial for transformation and co-liberation. They embody our values of interdependence, love, and generosity while helping build beloved community where every neighbor’s voice matters.
This calling isn’t for everyone, which is why we curate our network mindfully. If you feel drawn to ending the relational poverty and isolation at the core of our culture’s problems, reach out to us to learn more about our next training session.
Voices from the Edge Podcast Series
At Green Mountain Justice, we believe that real change happens when we stop talking about people and start talking with them. Featured on Vermont Public’s Vermont Edition in November 2025, Our “Voices from the Edge” podcast series lifts up the stories of disenfranchised Vermonters whose experiences are too often overlooked or misunderstood—neighbors who are living a precarious existence, struggling with housing and food insecurity, working essential jobs for wages that don’t cover basic needs, and navigating systems that seem designed to keep them out rather than help them succeed.
Through intimate conversations, this series reveals the impossible contradictions our neighbors face: a working mother who fought for nearly two years to secure stable housing while raising three children and volunteering as an EMT; a veteran navigating racism and systemic barriers while experiencing homelessness; and a couple who fell from middle-class stability into sleeping under bridges after health crises devastated their finances. These are hardworking people earning too much to qualify for assistance yet too poor for housing, essential workers who serve our community daily while fighting for their own stability, and resilient individuals whose stories challenge our assumptions about poverty, homelessness, and what it means to belong in Vermont.
Produced by the amazing storyteller Corey Hendrickson, each episode drops every month from September 2025 through February 2026, offering a chance to truly listen to the lived experiences of our neighbors and discover our collective power to create meaningful change. Because transformation isn’t just personal—it’s communal, and it starts with the simple, revolutionary act of listening.
Vermont’s Extreme Cold Weather Shelter Program
Thousands of Vermonters lack stable housing. The state’s shelter system is full. Every night, hundreds of our neighbors are forced to sleep outside or in their vehicles, in brutal, dehumanizing winter conditions.
Green Mountain Justice partners with Vermont Interfaith Action (VIA) to co-administer Vermont’s Extreme Cold Weather Shelter Program (ECWSP). During the 2025/26 winter, this collaboration delivered 1,390 warm, safe bed-nights through community shelter providers in Bennington, Burlington, Newport, Rutland, Barre, Montpelier, and Brattleboro.
GMJ provides operational guidance and support to community shelters statewide. We also co-produced the analysis that enabled the state to lower the activation threshold from -10°F to 0°F windchill. That change means communities can open shelters sooner, protecting more neighbors on more nights.
We see the ECWSP as more than emergency response. It is an opportunity to increase connection and systematically reduce harm to Vermont’s most vulnerable neighbors. Care through dignified, trauma-informed emergency services. Connect through relationships among faith communities, service providers, and neighbors. Collaborate through coordination with VIA, the state, and community partners.
Let us be clear: as long as any of our neighbors are forced to sleep outside, there is no justice. The ECWSP does not solve homelessness. But it protects lives,
Warmth & Dignity Campaign: A Collaboration Across Communities
There’s a thread that connects a sewing floor in Detroit to a tent in the Vermont woods. It’s stitched into every EMPWR coat we hand to a neighbor in need.
The coats are made by formerly unhoused parents at the Empowerment Plan in Detroit, Michigan. Our incredible partners there built something remarkable: a manufacturing operation that pays living wages, provides on-site childcare, and offers the training and stability that move families from homelessness into lasting economic self-sufficiency. The coats themselves are extraordinary. Heavy-duty. Weather-treated. They convert from over-the-shoulder bag to coat to sleeping bag in a few easy steps. Designed to last for many seasons in the harshest conditions.
When one of our Neighbor Care Neighbors hands an EMPWR coat to a Vermont neighbor who would otherwise face the cold without protection, something larger is happening. A parent in Detroit sewed warmth into that coat as part of their own path out of homelessness. A neighbor in Vermont receives that warmth as an expression of dignity and care. Two communities, separated by 700 miles, are bound together by the same conviction: every person is equally and inherently worthy.
This is what interdependence looks like in practice. Not charity flowing one direction. Mutual flourishing flowing both.
This past winter, our partnership with Empowerment Plan allowed us to provide 36 EMPWR coats to neighbors across our Neighbor Care ecosystem. Because of the blessing of this growing collaboration, Empowerment Plan has committed to supplying us with 100 coats for the 2026/27 winter season. That’s 100 Vermont neighbors who will know warmth, dignity, and the comfort of being seen. And it’s continued employment and stability for the parents in Detroit whose hands made those coats possible.
As one unhoused Vermont neighbor said after receiving his coat: “When you’re sleeping outside, you’re not just cold—you’re invisible. This coat says someone sees and cares about me.” That’s the heart of it. The coat is the visible thing. The relationship across communities is the deeper gift.
Freedom & Unity: Voices from Our Community
Green Mountain Justice partners with the Addison Independent newspaper in Vermont’s Champlain Valley in their “Freedom & Unity” editorial series, amplifying diverse voices on justice, equity, and interdependence in our communities. This award-winning collaboration showcases perspectives from neighbors who are often marginalized—including those experiencing homelessness, poverty, mental health challenges, and systemic oppression.
Recent contributors include neighbors in recovery, advocates working in rural communities, and those with direct experience of homelessness and intersectional marginalization. These authentic voices demonstrate that those most affected by injustice hold crucial insights for transformation and healing.
Education Around Power, Privilege, and Justice
Supporting education that integrates theoretical and applied knowledge to create equity and justice, Green Mountain Justice is honored to collaborate with Middlebury College and the Privilege & Poverty (P&P) program in its Center for Community Engagement (CCE). P&P is a learning community that brings classrooms and communities together to address the causes and consequences of poverty, and cultivate lifelong ethical participation in society. P&P connects learning in the classroom to learning in the community, informed and enriched through our sustained, collaborative relationships with community organizations and coalitions, along with our collaborations with other institutions of higher education. We put learning to work to address the causes and consequences of economic inequality.
An example of a successful CCE P&P collaboration is the Clifford Symposium series, which in 2024 was entitled “Home: Housing and Belonging in Middlebury and Beyond.” For the first time, part of the symposium took place at Champlain Valley Unitarian Universalist Society (CVUUS). CVUUS hosted a “connection & action” lunch as well as filmmaker Bess O’Brien and a screening of her documentary Just Getting By.