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J ubilee Partners is a religious com
munity in Madison County whose
mission is to fulfill the moral teach
ings of Jesus through social activ
ism. This has been their project for 30 years,
harboring political refugees on a 260-acre
woodland estate set aside for just that pur
pose. Over the years, Jubilee has sponsored
thousands of people. It is no exaggeration to
say that many of them would have met certain
death had they been returned to their home
countries. And before their arrival, many had
experienced conditions and circumstances
such as refugee camps and torture chambers,
acquiring experiences far more foreign to read
ers than the lands they had fled.
Jubilee Partners has a sister proj
ect, Koinonia, in Americus, GA. Don
Mosley and others have nurtured
both of these programs, as well as
being among the principle founders
of Habitat for Humanity, the world-
renowned organization that addresses
the housing needs of poor people
everywhere. Former President Jimmy
Carter, whose hometown of Plains is
not far from Americus and Koinonia,
has assumed an important role as a
board member of Habitat, and has
taken an active interest in Jubilee as
well.
This article is the attempt of an
outsider to enter this world and bring
a part of it to light for the people of
Athens. Though it's only 15 miles from
downtown, a very few locals have ever
heard of it.
catwalk, looking in through a window to find
a medium-sized dining hall. The room was
empty. In front was an enclosed counter, obvi
ously a serving area. Great stainless steel pots
shone upon black burners. Still, no people.
Outside the dining hall was a series of doors.
I opened one. In a closet-sized work area, a
diminutive, elderly woman stood, leaning into
her work (which I later learned was grinding
grain). She had headphones on and did not
notice my peeping in. I would not startle her.
I walked across a short path to a dining
room, a kind of cozy mess hall able to seat
perhaps 50 people. A long counter in front
.divided off the dining area from the kitchen.
Looking into it, I was finally able to get the
doesn't trust them too much." We also passed
a chicken coop. Jubilee has been able to
supply about half of the food needs of staff,
volunteers and refugees from homegrown veg
etables, in addition to dairy, eggs and poultry
of its own. There is the occasional addition
of wild game. It also also depends heavily
on the Athens food bank, Kroger, EarthFare
and other sources for maybe half of its food.
Supermarket shopping is also an important
part of the refugees' orientation: an adventure
in itself.
. As we wended past the larger buildings,
outbuildings and sheds, a couple of boys came
into view, riding their bicycles. Coffee pointed
out that they were from the Congo.
of the opportunity by joining those present
for dinner and interviewing Don first. What
follows is that interview, which took place in
Jubilee's library.
Flagpole: My first questions for you, Don,
would involve how you came upon this voca
tion, in establishing Jubilee Partners. If you
could shed some light on that...
Don Mosley: I'll try to hit the high points
and be brief. I started out as an engineer'
in Central Texas, yet with a great interest in
other countries and cultures, and I was often
traveling. That led me into the Peace Corps.
After a couple of years as a Peace Corps vol
unteer, came back to the States, met Carolyn
and married her, and drafted her. We
went back into the Peace Corps. I
had been in Malaysia as a volunteer;
then went to Korea, where I was a
Peace Corps director over about 125
volunteers at any given time, along
the DMZ in South Korea. While we
were there, we heard about this crazy
place in Georgia. In Sumter County. I
had no idea where Americus, Georgia
was, or any such place. A Christian
community called Koinonia Farm.
The more I heard about it the more
excited I got. We lived there through
out the 1970s. While I was Director
of Koinonia in 1976, I helped Millard
Fuller found Habitat for Humanity. In
1978, we found this piece of property
in Madison County. Three families from
Koinonia agreed to be the first to start
the community. The other two fami
lies have long since moved on. And
in 1979, we moved to this property,
and started to build the first of the
18 buildings. Carolyn and I have been
here ever since that time. It's now 29
years, in just another few weeks, that
we will have been here.
FP: It sounds like, in just a gen
eral way, possibly a difference of emphasis
between Koinonia and here is that Jubilee
has its largest focus on refugees, and perhaps
Koinonia has more of the early Habitat orien
tation: the need for housing for low-income
people.
DM: We came here when we bought this
property for Jubilee; from all those brilliant
planning sessions that we had, really what
we came up with was essentially a cloning off
of Koinonia. We were going to build low-cost
housing and [had] some emphasis on the
green movement, on solar energy. I have built
a number of different kinds of solar water-
heaters and things we hoped to market to
bring in some of our income.
But it was after we came here to this
property—actually in the spring and summer
of '79 as we were working on the first build
ing, listening tc the radio while we worked—
hearing the news about the boat people from
Vietnam that, in particular, got our attention.
And the more we heard about that, the more
we started to think, "We really ought to take
this 260 acres and make it into an orientation
center." Refugee resettlement. By the end of
the summer of '79 we set our sights on being
prepared one year later to receive refugees.
Along with two other families, Don and Carolyn Mosley helped found the community at Jubilee Partners almost 30 years ago.
H ighway 22, heading into
Comer from Oglethorpe
County. The sign had
intrigued me for years, yet I had not
thought to turn down that dirt road,
fearing an encounter with one more
fundamentalist clique tucked away
in the Northeast Georgia landscape.
Madison County is mot generally thought of as
a refugee destination.
My mind had mulled over the word
"Jubilee," an old-fashioned term I had dimly
associated with my childhood. The kind of
jubilee I had envisioned for such a place
more resembled a Salvation Army marching
band, staid yet high-stepping out in front of
a ragtag band of press-ganged worshippers—
no intimation of poised, intelligent, chari
table folk toiling in wooded serenity. And no
thought of refugees from across the world's
war zones...
An acquaintance of mine, no friend to reli
gious extremism, tipped me off. My fears were
unfounded. "They're cool people; you should
check them out."
The road leading up to the main buildings
of Jubilee Partners is a straight shot back
from Highway 22 about a half-mile. In that
short distance, one is transported to a world
only hinted at by the dense tree lines that
wrap these rural drives. Entering the land for
the first time, I was revisited by the boyhood
thought that somehow, improbably, nature can
still make a stand.
Pulling into a graveled parking area, I
set out in search of folks. I crossed a small
attention of folks to whom I could announce
my presence and purpose. Nobody seemed
in the least surprised to see me, and I was
greeted by young female cooks—volunteers,
it turned out. I was then referred back to the
first person I'd encountered, a woman called
Coffee Worth (the first named picked up in
her childhood because of her maiden name,
Maxwell). This companionable 88-year-old
was quite happy to take me on a tour of the
grounds. "The only thing I ask is that we go
in your car—I've made the rounds once today,
and I'm a bit tired from it," she said, her
quick, small steps, bright eyes and nimbleness
belying the supposition of infirmity that many
attach to age.
T he day was bright and crisp; it was
late winter in Northeast Georgia,
and a share of what we saw was the
beauty that meets the hundreds of thousands
of Georgians still pocketed in a countryside
of forests, fields and red earth. As my car
crunched slowly down the gravel, Coffee
pointed out the lone cow in her pen. The
cows' udders were swelled with milk, and
she grazed oblivious to our intrusion. "She
doesn't much like people," Coffee said. "She
"These people have had it really hard,"
she said. "But they're happy out here, and it's
really sad when they have to leave. Before this
they were living in refugee camps, sometimes
right out in the open. Some of them have
gone through terrible, terrible things." What
they had gone through, however horrible, had
not extinguished the children's spirits, as was
evident in their smiling faces while biking
alongside my car down the path back towards
the Koinonia House, or "K House" for short.
Completing the initial tour, I returned to
the dining hall, where dinner preparations
were proceeding. It was suggested that I
arrange to meet the founder of Jubilee, Don
Mosley. A call was made, and I received his
return call in an old-fashioned phone booth
built into the room. He would arrive shortly,
being in the midst of baking bread for his
wife for Valentine's Day. Meeting with Don, he
invited me back to dinner, to meet the volun
teers and refugees, and to get a better sense
of daily life at Jubilee.
A few evenings later, I made my way back
out to the grounds. I had received a message
from Don, cautioning me that the volunteers
would be delayed, and that they would not be
around until much later. I decided to make use
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8 FLAGP0LE.C0M • MAY 7, 2008