Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2008 / Local woman receives award from Pax Christi
Local woman receives award from Pax Christi
by Kristin Lukowski of The Michigan Catholic
Published September 19, 2008
Detroit — "Pax Christi" literally means "peace of Christ," and that's what local woman Jennifer Mills has been trying to bring to others.
Mills, 21, received the Young Adult Peacemaker Award earlier this year from Pax Christi Michigan, a group that works to bring about peace through prayer, study and action, according to its Web site.
She was honored for organizing a bus for an annual trip to Fort Benning, Ga., to protest the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation combat training ground, for volunteering in the Dominican Republic, and for acting as a sponsor for the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults.
Mills, a senior biology major at the University of Michigan, said she was surprised to receive the award. "I go where I feel I can use my strengths and talents to do something," she said.
Joan Tirak, coordinator of Pax Christi Michigan, explained that the award is given annually to a young adult peacemaker "who embodies the ideals of Pax Christi Michigan, which include a commitment to peace through active nonviolence, disarmament of hearts and nations, upholding human rights and justice for all peoples, and global restoration."
Mills, who was previously active in the St. Owen youth group in Bloomfield Hills, rode in a carpool through her parish at school, St. Mary Student Parish in Ann Arbor, to the protest at Fr. Benning. Her sophomore year, she arranged for a bus, figuring more people would attend that way.
"I'd never done anything like that at all," she said. "I was not politically involved in anything. It was very different experience for me."
She continued to organize the bus ride for her junior and senior years, and is training a replacement for after she graduates. This year, she's also helped to organize three events leading up to the trip, including a presentation by an Argentine torture survivor.
This past spring break, Mills also went to the Dominican Republic with the student group Health in Action, which works to bring about sustainable health care and resources. While she was there, her job was to survey residents about their health care.
Mills, who wants to study epidemiology in a master's program after she graduates, hopes to use her experience in Latin America, she said. "There are tons of diseases out there that need attention," she said.
And if organizing protest trips and volunteering over spring break weren't enough, Mills has also been a RCIA sponsor twice.
Mills said that although her activities aren't all inherently faith-based, she still finds she is helping others and, oftentimes, working toward social justice — a tenet of the Catholic faith. "I guess it's where I feel like I should be, and what I should be doing," she said.
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