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Farm Bill "Green Lines" — Shifting the Faith-Based Conversation

Advocate,

As we celebrate ten years of shared leadership, today we look back at a moment shaped by partnership, curiosity, and the courage to ask a different question.

In 2018, while many faith-based organizations rightly focused on hunger and nutrition programs in the Farm Bill, UUSJ volunteers and partners — including the late Lavona Grow, a beloved UUSJ leader — asked:

Where can we have the most impact? What if faith groups also took the environmental dimensions of the Farm Bill as seriously as they do hunger?

Working with Lavona and other partners, Pablo and UUSJ helped elevate sustainability, champion programs like EQIP, and began to articulate "green lines" — shared expectations for environmental stewardship. By 2023–2024, more and more advocates were testing and using that language.

This is part of our origin story: changing conversations, not just reacting to them. Working in the background.

And so today, in addition to celebrating Pablo, we honor Lavona's legacy and the volunteers and partners who continue to build on it.

 

What Is the Farm Bill — and Why Does It Matter?

The Farm Bill is a major piece of federal legislation passed roughly every five years. For summary information on UUSJ's take, see here.

Make your Day 7 gift of $10 to honor our shared legacy of bold, collaborative action.

Lavona Grow

"It's hard in an environment where corporations are now people; and money equals speech, for average people to feel heard." 

- Lavona Grow

Who Was Lavona Grow?

Lavona Grow was a longtime UUSJ leader and organizational pioneer whose clarity, curiosity, and commitment to justice shaped our advocacy for more than a decade. She served as Board Chair, led the Advocacy Program, coordinated the Capitol Hill Advocacy Corps, and helped build UUSJ's national Write Here! Write Now! letter-writing campaign.

Lavona brought deep experience from her decades of congressional engagement with the American Association of University Women (AAUW) Capitol Hill Lobby Corps, where she volunteered as a lobbyist beginning in 1986. She was known for her strategic insight, her steady moral voice, and her ability to help volunteers feel confident and grounded in their UU values.

Her leadership strengthened UUSJ in many ways. Strategically, she championed the move to “go national” and become a small but mighty UU federal ministry. Tactically, she had a knack for seeing around the corner — recognizing the Farm Bill not only as a hunger bill, but also as a climate and environmental justice bill. That insight helped shift how many of us, and other faith groups, approached sustainability and conservation.

 

Lavona’s legacy will continue through the UUSJ Lavona Grow Fund, created to support UUSJ’s path forward and ensure her bold, grounded, justice-driven leadership remains part of our future.

This unrestricted fund will strengthen UUSJ's capacity for:

  • National advocacy
  • Coalition building
  • Environmental and economic justice work
  • Training and equipping UU advocates
  • Strategic initiatives that build a stronger UU justice movement

The Fund will ensure that Lavona's spirit and vigor continue to shape UUSJ's future.

 
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