VALUES

Building Community
Community is at once a beautiful gift and an amazing challenge. Community calls people from diverse backgrounds to come together to share their lives with others in a common vision. In community, volunteers can find support and mutual encouragement while giving witness to their beliefs and working for greater peace and justice in the world. When volunteers commit themselves to the common vision of the community, differences become gifts that enhance the lives of all in the community as well as those who the community serves.

The Red Cloud Volunteer community is comprised of 18-20 volunteers each year. The volunteers live in three houses, each with 5-7 volunteers in it. The volunteers have their own bedrooms and share all other rooms in the spacious houses. While the fruits of community develop gradually during the shared meals, the reflections at the end of a long day, and the weekends spent playing games, community is also intentionally fostered in a variety of ways. Volunteers attend four retreats during the year and they have regular community meetings twice a month. These gatherings provide an opportunity for volunteers to reflect on their journey and to share their reflections with others in the community.

Sharing Faith
Faith is the core of all that we do. Our work is about bringing about the Kingdom of God here on Earth. Our relationships are based on the recognition that we are all one in Christ's body. Our prayer reflects our dependence on God as the source of all creation.

RC Volunteers are of all faiths. We all come together to share in our common dependence on God regardless of what name we use to speak about God. In the schools, Catholicism and Ignatian spirituality are interwoven with Lakota spirituality to provide the foundation for the education that our students receive.

Doing Justice
In our materialistic world, some have a lot while others have to struggle to meet their basic needs. Many of the families on the reservation live in poverty and struggle to give their children the food, clothes and other items that most of us take for granted. Often materialistic differences result in unequal treatment and lack of opportunities. Here at Red Cloud we strive to eliminate these inequalities by recognizing that all people are created equal, nomatter what their age, race, gender or social status may be.

The core value of a person is never a question, it is a given and our actions should always reflect that no matter who we are dealing with. It is a major struggle for some of us to abandon the materialistic value system our society has created in our consumer oriented nation. Here at Red Cloud, we place our focus on potential and the instrinsic value we are all born with. By living simply we adopt an open and accepting attitude, and make room for building valuable and meaningful relationships with each other, our students and our Creator.

Living Simply
While the United States constitutes 5.6 percent of the world's population, we demand well over 25 percent of the world's energy and natural resources to support our lifestyle. Given this reality, the RC Volunteers choose "to live simply so that others may simply live." We seek to differentiate our needs from our wants, to take only that which we need. While simplicity is manifested in our willingness to live on a modest monthly stipend of $125.00 (for a first year volunteer), it is in essence a spiritual discipline. By limiting the distractions from television, shopping malls, and other "things," we are better able to focus our lives on that which is truly important: relationships with those around us and with God.