On Tuesday, Oct. 26, students in Professor Terri Giller’s Introduction to Creative Arts Therapy class took a trip to Wheeling, W.Va.’s MoJo House to learn about how the facility is involved in the arts at a community level. MoJo being a sort of moniker for the center entitled the Mother Jones Center for Resilient Community, “uses arts and creativity to empower youth and adults to become agents of change in Wheeling, [W.Va.],” as stated in their Instagram biography (@themojocrc).

Speaking to the students primarily on how they, the MoJo center, use art to address adverse childhood experiences within the greater Ohio Valley, the overall goal for the initiative is change for the community that surrounds them at any given time.

As a part of a larger collective founded under labor union organizer and social activist, Mary Harris Jones, the Mother Jones group, seeks to fight for economic, social, and corporate justice through powerful societal calls to action. Harris, the self-proclaimed “hell-raiser,” is arguably the most famous female labor activist of the nineteenth century, going on to be cited by a United States attorney as “the most dangerous woman in America,” her biography states on the website for the National Women’s History Museum.

Still, none of this fiery passion has been lost to time for the greater MoJo Center initiative. The location in Wheeling strides toward a goal to empower the people, youth and adults alike, of the Ohio Valley to become their own agents of change through the healing process the Center aims to provide. As stated on their facebook page, the MoJo Center looks to heal communities stricken by trauma through five main components: creativity, education, compassionate play, and meaningful relationships. From the wonderful response the Center has seen thus far, to the programs here on the Hilltop reaching out to learn and grow from the practices they have outlined, the Mother Jones Center for Resilient Community looks to only continue to grow from here.