What we aim to do

(Above: a project making beach art and discovering shoreline ecosystems; Lincolnshire)

What we do: Inclusion, involvement and communication are key to The Juno Project. We do this through a range of creative and imaginative ways, for public benefit. For example, we endeavour to

advance understanding of

•        welfare, well-being, quality of life, happiness and enjoyment.
•        equality, equity & ethical communities; social, environmental & economic welfare

•        the arts and cultural heritage

•        landscape and natural heritage.

•        wildlife and animal welfare.

•        responsible, compassionate and sustainable lifestyles .

•        climate change and eco-philosophy. 

•        enterprise and volunteering.

(Above: seeds for the future. Photographed by a supporter)

Our Learning Communities: 

A) by creating learning communities groups for disadvantaged people & those lacking confidence.

 

B) by creating communities of interest learning groups for specialist researchers and communicators who will enhance and create positive change in the wider communities. 

 C) by creating resources and activities that:

 1) advance knowledge and skills to improve life quality, social and economic wellbeing, social and economic welfare and help people become more fulfilled, happy, active, able to gain employment or volunteer. 

2) promote opportunities, enterprise and positive business models. 

3) advance understanding of equality, equity, democracy and collective responsibility and foster skills which enable people to obtain their ethical aspirations and participate in making decisions that affect their communities, lives, development and access to basic requirements. 

4) promote access to culture. the arts and heritage that enriches people's lives and respects people, animals and the environment.

5) advance understanding that places have special meaning to communities and the that natural heritage (habitats, landscapes and wildlife) is irreplaceable and may need to be both accessible and protected for the enjoyment of all.

6) promote skills that reduce harm, neglect, cruelty, exploitation and suffering in human society; advance  animal welfare; promote understanding of climate change, environmental issues and empower people to live sustainably, conserve heritage plants, ecosystems, water, soil and clean air. 

Our vision

   “Educate to Rejuvenate: to aid & benefit our communities”

(Our vision is from concepts associated with Juno: iuvare, “to aid, benefit”, iuvenescendo, “to rejuvenate”.)

                                   

 (Above:  Percy Peacock, our peacock mascot, photographed by one of our Nottinghamshire volunteers. Peacocks pulled the chariot of Juno.)

We implement our vision through:

• Our responsive, accessible approach, made possible because we are a small project, run by Dawn Chorus Educational Initiative CIC.
• Valuing the volunteers on whom we rely. 
• Delivering work that is quality assured by our extensive expertise and experience and by measuring impact and demonstrating our accountability and success.
• Collaboration and co-operation within the Triple Helix Project. 

                       

(Above: a child learning about growing food; Lincolnshire)

Where we work: in areas such as the East Midlands (Nottingham & Nottinghamshire; Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and Rutland); Northamptonshire, South Yorkshire & Staffordshire. Our stakeholders are our local communities & communities of interest.

We share best practice & learning with some of the poorest communities in the world, Native American communities & people in Pakistan & Africa (especially Ethiopia) where we work primarily with women & children.

Our name: people ask what inspired our name, it derives from the Goddess Juno who is associated with women’s enterprise, regeneration & peacocks. Peacocks appear in our logo with Juno, Cupid (social engagement) & Silvanus (the environment, nature) .

(Below top: children in Pakistan painting a peacock, "Percy" our mascot. Below bottom children in the UK enjoying creative learning. )

                                       
Our volunteer Andrew says: 

                                                       

"the benefits we deliver are seen in our work; meeting people's needs & 

making a difference in communities"

The Triple Helix

(Biodiversity projects. Above: a peacock butterfly photographed by a volunteer walk leader, Leicestershire. Below: a dragonfly photographed by a volunteer species recorder, Nottinghamshire)

The Triple Helix Programme is part of the Dawn Chorus Educational Initiative CIC prospectus. It is a co-operative partnership with other totally independent organisations including First Peace Chaplaincy. It fits well with the Juno Project. It assists implementation of strong standards. It's responsive flexibility; clear, simple achievable and creative concepts; moral, ethical and meaningful action creates healthy outcomes; local enjoyment and worth.

In addition, we share global benefit & positive change through our Dawn Chorus Educational Initiative International Co-operation Programme.

• Our Learning Community Networks engage, nurture, motivate, enable, encourage and support learning. 
• It offers participation, learning resources, assemblies, deliberations, communication, forums & experience with the potential to increase self determination. 
• Benefits include increase in thoughtful, mindful & compassionate attitudes; opportunity; multi level community connections & potential through Dawn Chorus Educational Initiative International Co-operation programme. 
• The Juno Project benefits the Triple Helix Programme by offering participation, learning resources, assemblies, deliberative forums and experience that generate the potential to increase self determination.

This Co-operation strengthens delivery of benefits, through the following work that we do :

We assist in the understanding of democracy & foster skills for participation in decisions that affect communities & impact on our lives & economy. We encourage accessible local democracy, encouraging collective responsibility, to help assure that the basic means of life, growth & development are available for all.

We nurture community learning & skills development in order to enrich lives and help people into the labour market in exchange for fair pay, security & dignity.

We work within communities, discussing & exploring how their own resources & destinies can be ethically secured; fostering the understanding that life resources, such as water, needed by plants, animals & humans, should be affordable, accessible to all, uncontaminated & sustainably managed.

We deliver learning in organic plant based food growing, seed saving & propagation, pollination, composting and soil management. We encourage the development and sharing of innovative low technology solutions by networking information.

(Below: healthy growing, healthy eating, photograph by supporter)

We work with communities to stimulate cultural enjoyment & enterprise

through participation in activities in heritage & history, the arts & crafts, such as the visual arts, ceramics, music, words and language, needle crafts, cooking, plant crafts & traditional wood skills.

We cooperate with indigenous communities in specified international locations, respecting their right to seek inclusion in international agreements among nations, thus giving them a voice; indigenous people must be on an equal footing with other people & nations.

We offer and publicise opportunities & support for all, helping people meet their needs & fulfil their ethical aspirations, showing that enterprise is rooted in & responsible to communities & future generations. We work cooperatively, especially with women headed households and children leaving care, to create positive community business models, favoring self management & worker ownership.

(Above: projects inspire future generations and create sustainability. Photograph by a supporter)

We understand that places have special meaning to communities & that places have irreplaceable habitats, ecosystems & beauty, that should not be desecrated by exploitation.

(Projects to improve habitats. Above: swans photographed by a volunteer, Nottinghamshire)

We support access to cultural heritage that respects human, animal & environmental well-being, for the benefit of society.

We help communities protect & conserve the life-sustaining systems of the planet; extending understanding & helping to bring about positive behavioural change. 

(Above, Patrick Harry raising awareness of deforestation & promoting plant based food growing)

We nurture respect for :

human communities
the natural environment
wild plants and open-pollinated heirloom plants
habitats and ecosystems
ecological communities 
all animals
 
All are too precious to be made commodities, be harmed or exploited; all should be free from suffering, neglect & cruelty. 

1^st. Peace Chaplaincy Interfaith & Eco Spirituality Ministry:  

The benefits to our communities of this joint work, can include increase in thoughtful, mindful and compassionate attitudes; opportunity; multi level community connection and potential. 

Our organisations came together to celebrate 1^st. Peace Chaplaincy Interfaith & Eco Spirituality Ministry, as they celebrated 40 years of service to the Anglo American community in 2022. They published a 40 year report in 2024.

In 1982 Chief Frank Chilcote, a Crow Medicine Man who had set up the XAT Society and Prison-Ashram project (based in Seattle) & The Anglo American Support Society for Native American Prisoners (based in Camelford), both asked Norma Saunders, to set up a UK interfaith chaplaincy supporting Native American prisoners. XAT felt that a chaplaincy in the UK, a country without the death penalty, could bring a different perspective that of groups working in the USA. First Peace Chaplaincy is proud of the organisations ministry for death row prisoners. 

The Chaplaincy took its name from Black Elks famous lines: “The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the centre of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its centre is really everywhere, it is within each of us.”

First Peace Chaplaincy expanded their reach in 2011. They now work in the wider communities of interest wherever they are needed. The chaplaincy ministers to people who are unable to attend the usual spiritual community activities, by being present or in a position to communicate. They listen, respond and offer appropriate care and general ministry. They empower users to nurture there own spiritual coping strategies. 

As well as spiritual ministry, the chaplaincy delivers moral and religious education, pastoral support, community and cultural activities and compassionate and humanitarian projects. They work with the spirit whatever the faith.

They are committed to co-operation in the diverse society in which we all live, through:

1.Interfaith dialogue between people of different religious traditions and by sharing goals of understanding the varied traditions and web of world religions. One way of doing this is to learning about the histories & beliefs of others, whilst celebrating our own named festivals.

2. Multifaith affinity with aspects of the group of beliefs and range of philosophy that follow: Pagan, Heathen, 1st. Nations, African Animism, Celtic & Saxon Christian, Spiritualism.

They offer expertise in spiritual ecology & wider well being programmes, alongside traditional ministry, worship & mysticism. They have found ourselves more in demand than ever, as people report feeling anxious about the social & political turmoil, fighting & war around the world & lack of action on climate change, nature loss, human & animal suffering.

First Peace Chaplaincy Mission Points:

1.Our Chaplaincy will provide a writing ministry for First Nations in the USA ( first facilitated in co-operation with the Anglo-American prison support association UK & XAT Medicine Society in the USA

2.Our Chaplaincy will provide a writing ministry & justice campaign for animal rights, environmental campaigners & political prisoners in the UK

3.Our chaplaincy raises awareness of Eco-spirituality within communities of interest. Our Eco-spirituality ministry supports those with anxiety from climate, nature & biodiversity collapse, through prayer, practical actions, education, spiritual practice & the healing of relationships with nature.

4.We seek to heal the heart of people and communities & enhance life therein & encourage well balanced free will & well being & within communities, people, the animal kingdom & all of nature, ministering to each soul & divine spirit & fostering thoughtful, mindful, compassionate attitudes, connections & potential. Names & issues can be submitted for our Lyfjaberg healing book.

5.Our chaplaincy supports social justice, animal & environmental welfare & works to create co-operation & understanding through interfaith projects & multi-faith inclusion; working with the spirit whatever the faith: pagan, heathen, US 1st. Nation & African animism, Celtic & Saxon Christian, Spiritualism…the web of world religions.

6.Our ministry uses prayer, spiritual, magical & psychic mysteries & works with nature & the divine to create positive change & display gratitude, joy & nurture & enhance all life.

7.Our chaplaincy maintains it’s liminal position, it’s awareness of spirit, it’s willingness to learn & act responsibly. We work with other chaplaincies, ministries & circles that harmonise with our own. 

At First Peace Chaplaincy, Tuesday mornings, 10:30-11:30 is Spiritual Ecology Hour.

First Peace Chaplaincy volunteers: choose from the topics: 

1.Prayer. 2.Small practical actions. 3. Earth healing Path walking. 4. Nature & well being visualisation. 5. Magical Battle of Middle Earth. 6. Positive spiritual ecology affirmations. 7. Building awareness of how spiritual principles can influence our approach to thinking about & engaging in ecological matters. 8.How best to support animist or divine concepts when perceiving & speaking about ecology. 9. Talk in the community, about the sacred value of Earth 10. Mindfully & thoughtfully reading an item of relevance to nature and spirituality. 11. The Small Circles Group is our group to support those working with children.

 

Dawn Chorus Educational Initiative CIC website:dawnchoruseducationalinitiative.org.uk
Follow Dawn Chorus Educational Initiative CIC, First Peace Chaplaincy on Facebook
Newsletter of the XAT Society and Prison-Ashram project chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://humankindness.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/web_1981-