Father Jay Davidson address a CAJE FunctionCAJE Congregations Acting for Justice and Empowerment
Father Jay Davidson address a CAJE Function
Congregations Acting for Justice and
Empowerment, CAJE, is an interdenominational coalition of eight churches in the
Evansville area. Founded in September of 2003, CAJE is
working to build a powerful, grassroots organization to achieve a greater degree
of justice in the city.
CAJE's greatest success occurred around the
issue of housing code enforcement. After conducting research, CAJE realized that
the department of code enforcement was vastly
understaffed and that inspectors were not allowed to inspect the entire city of
Evansville. After working with Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel, CAJE was able to
secure the reorganization of the code enforcement department. As a result,
inspectors from other departments in the city government were reassigned to code
enforcement and inspections now took place citywide.
CAJE also has been working on providing dental care for the indigent. After researching the problem, CAJE found that there were clinics in the city to provide care, but that they did not have a full-time dentist. As a result, there are approximately 800 people waiting for emergency dental care. CAJE found a federal designation called a "Health Professional Shortage Area," ofHPSA. If Evansville were to receive this rating, the federal government would assist clinics in hiring dentists. In order to receive a HPSA designation, it is necessary to have local dentists fill out a brief survey. CAJE has been pressuring the First District Dental Society to complete a HPSA survey.
Furthermore, CAJE has been pursuing the
reforming of the educational curriculum in the EVSC. Seeing that less than half
of minority and impoverished students were passing the ISTEP test, CAJE sought
the implementation of a pilot program with the curriculum Direct Instruction
(DI). DI has been extremely successful at teaching at-risk children basic
reading skills and their testing has improved remarkably. CAJE is currently
working with the EVSC to implement this program. 
Finally, because the code enforcement issue was resolved, CAJE decided to address homelessness as a new issue. The organization is currently researching this issue further.
