Contents

Introduction: Why Should You Trust JFA?

  1. Before Your Club Starts Choosing Pro-Life Activities

    • What Is Your Mission? 

    • Consider JFA’s Mission Statement

    • …Make Abortion Unthinkable for Millions… 

    • …One Person at a Time

    • Train Thousands…

  2. What Makes a Good Pro-Life Event?

    • Does your event create a debate about abortion? 

    • Does your event turn the debate into a dialogue? 

    • Is your event activating, training, or connecting pro-life advocates?

  3. Invite a JFA Speaker to Prepare You for One-to-One Conversations.

    • Why Host a JFA Speaker?  

    • Get to Know JFA Speakers and Presentations  

  4. Invite the JFA Training Program, including a Large Outreach Event.

    • What to Expect

    • Why Invite JFA to Your Campus?

    • Get to Know the JFA Training Program

  5. Free Resources You Can Use to Equip Your Club

    • Resources from Justice For All

    • Recommended Resources from Trusted Friends of JFA

  6. JFA-Style Poll Table: Small Outreach Event, Big Impact

    • Goals

    • Step-By-Step Instructions

    • Examples of Poll Tables

  7. Turn any Pro-Life Outreach Event into a Dialogue Event.

  8. JFA’s Online Resources – A Selection

  9. Surveys for Creating Conversations

To see this content as one continuous page, click here.

Introduction: Why Should You Trust JFA?

Can JFA help you?  Don’t take our word for it. 

Here’s what four pro-life leaders had to say after volunteering for JFA or inviting JFA to their campuses or both:

 

“Working with Justice For All bolstered our club in our fight against abortion, and helped spread awareness of our club. I highly recommend it for every single pro-life group on college campuses.”

-Meredith Boles, Live Action UCLA, 2016

See “How JFA Helped Me Reach My Campus” for Meredith’s detailed description of partnering with JFA in 2015 and 2016.

 

“As a junior at Colorado State University, I considered myself to be pro-life. I didn’t think abortion was okay, but I also thought there should be exceptions. It was at that time a friend invited me to attend a Justice For All training. Through the training, I gained a deeper understanding on the issue and realized that abortion is a violent act, no matter the circumstances. With the display, I was able to see the necessity of bringing the abortion conversation onto campus. It was this foundation that ignited my passion to support pregnant and parenting students and to defend the pre-born. I never would have thought attending a Justice For All training and display would lead me into my career with Students for Life of America, training and assisting students daily on the injustices of abortion. I highly recommend inviting Steve, Paul, and the JFA team onto your campus. Their displays speak to the injustice of abortion, while their experiences give you the foundation you need to enter into productive discussions and potentially save lives.”

-Camille Rodriguez, 2017

Camille invited JFA to CSU in 2008 and volunteered with JFA on other campuses in the years following.  Camille now serves as the Pacific Southwest Regional Coordinator for Students for Life of America.

 

“Through the JFA outreach I learned how to defend my beliefs.  The seminar and training manual were very helpful in presenting the pro-choice position and how pro-lifers should respond.  Above all, JFA’s professionalism, conduct, patience, and wisdom proved to be the most helpful example.  The JFA experience definitely inspired me to continue to learn and stand up for the unborn.”

 -Jinny Li, Student, Pasadena City College, 2009

 Jinny invited JFA to Pasadena City College in Southern California in 2009 and 2010.  Read how Jinny helped a friend in crisis and helped save a child’s life afterwards.

 

“After going with JFA to two colleges in CO and experiencing lots of debates and awesome conversations, it was time for me to leave to go to college. I now am a freshman at MTSU and I recently started a pro-life group on my campus! Justice For All not only placed a passion in my heart for the unborn, but equipped me with the important tools required to accurately defend my position.“”

-Porsche Kristina, 2006  

Porsche wrote this reflection in 2006 after volunteering with JFA through her high school.  She later invited JFA to her college, Middle Tennessee State University, in 2010.

 

Learn more about JFA from the perspectives of other students, pro-life leaders, church leaders, teachers, and school administrators.

1: Before Your Club Starts Choosing Pro-Life Activities

At JFA, we talk a lot about our twin passions: creating conversations that change hearts and minds and equipping pro-life advocates to create those conversations.  To accomplish these goals, we focus on creating large-format outreach events that within a two-day or three-day period cause hundreds and sometimes thousands of pro-choice (and pro-life!) advocates to stop so that our staff and volunteers can engage them in meaningful conversation about abortion.  In this guide you’ll see these passions coming through.  The questions we suggest you ask of any pro-life activity you’re considering are the questions we ask when we decide what events are worth trying to accomplish with our limited time and money.  As a pro-life student organization, we know it’s likely you have the same constraints of time and money that we experience, and probably to a greater degree.  Before you start asking questions of your activity ideas, though, we suggest defining your mission.

What Is Your Mission?

How would you describe the purpose of your club?  Is it to stop abortion on your campus?  Is it to make an impact beyond your campus on whether abortion is legal?  Is it to help women in one of the most difficult times of their lives, when they find themselves pregnant but don’t want to be?  Defining your mission will help you evaluate which activities are worth doing – those that accomplish your mission best.  Should you host a speaker?  Should you create a conference?  Should you hold a bake sale?  Should you protest a pro-abortion philosopher on campus?  Should you invite an organization to bring an outreach event?  It depends…on your mission. 

Consider JFA’s Mission Statement

Before you settle on a mission statement, though, we suggest you consider for a moment adopting some or all of the components of JFA’s mission statement: “training thousands to make abortion unthinkable for millions, one person at a time.” 

…Make Abortion Unthinkable for Millions…

Let me elaborate for a moment on that middle phrase.  We are aiming to “make abortion unthinkable for millions,” meaning, “for a strong majority in the United States.”  That means, roughly, that we’re attempting to make abortion just as unthinkable as slavery.  Why unthinkable?  Ultimately, we want to see the unborn treated as the equal human beings they are, intrinsically valuable ends in themselves.  For something so central as protecting humans from violence, it makes sense that the law should outlaw abortion.  Yet abortion is one of the most firmly entrenched rights in American law…right now.  To see public policy change, then, it’s going to be necessary first to cause public opinion to change.  We are seeking to change how people think and feel about abortion to make it possible that the unborn could ultimately be protected in law and loved as equals. 

…One Person at a Time

JFA focuses squarely (and with all of our energy) on changing public opinion – changing how people feel and think about abortion.  We believe that many activities might contribute to this, but dialogue makes a more lasting impact on public opinion than any other activity.  By dialogue, we mean a conversation that’s filled with listening to understand, asking questions with an open heart, and finding common ground.  It’s also a conversation in which the facts about the unborn and abortion, including the visual facts, are fully present and accounted for.  We’ve seen over and over that when we go find pro-choice advocates in their world, rather than expecting them to come to ours, and when we treat them respectfully, in many cases they allow us to challenge their views.  In many cases, they are open to changing their minds, especially when we show a similar openness to being mistaken about some of our beliefs.  This is why “one person at a time” is important to us.  We believe we can create a strong majority of people who see abortion as an evil similar to slavery, not primarily through mass media or social media campaigns, but primarily through conversations that give people space to rethink, free of the pressure to defend their turf or their honor.  That’s the value of dialogue – when done right, it values both the truth about the unborn’s humanity and the truth about the humanity of the person with whom we’re speaking.

Train Thousands…

If what we’ve said above is true, dialogue with pro-choice advocates, and dialogue with a whole lot of them, is necessary for bringing justice to unborn children.  So how can we make the most of our limited time and money to bring about the most conversations with pro-choice advocates?  That’s the question that we at JFA have wrestled with for years.  It’s what led us to emphasize the “train thousands” part of our mission statement.  We know that if thousands and thousands of pro-life advocates are creating conversations about abortion every week or every month, together we can change millions.  So, we’ve now come full circle to JFA’s mission statement (training thousands to make abortion unthinkable for millions, one person at a time) and the twin passions that explain our mission (creating a different kind of conversation with millions of pro-choice advocates by training thousands of pro-life advocates to have those conversations). 

So, the question is before you: Are you wanting to change the way people feel and think about abortion in order to see public opinion change – on your campus and beyond?  Are you wanting to equip pro-life advocates in your community to create the conversations that help people change?  If you see these goals as part of your mission, then we invite you to consider the following questions whenever you’re planning your pro-life events or deciding which events to do.

Navigation Links: Contents / Intro: Why Trust JFA / 1: Before You Start / 2: What Makes a Good Event? / 3: Invite a JFA Speaker / 4: Invite JFA Training Program / 5: Free Resources / 6: Poll Table / 7: Pro-life Event into a Dialogue Event / 8: Online Resources / 9: Surveys / Printable (Whole Series)

2: What Makes a Good Pro-Life Event?

Does your event create a debate about abortion?

You should be able to answer “YES!” to at least one of these questions…

  • Is your event captured in the newspaper?

  • Is there a buzz?  Is it talked about in classes? 

  • Is it visually compelling?  Does it intrigue the viewer?

  • Does your event make unborn children and abortion almost impossible to ignore?

  • Are individual members of the community rethinking their views on abortion?

  • Are you talking to people who disagree (pro-choice or non-religious)?

 

Does your event turn the debate into a dialogue?

You should be able to answer “YES!” to all four of these questions…

 

Is your event activating, training, or connecting pro-life advocates?

You should be able to answer “YES!” to at least one of these questions…

  • Are you collecting email addresses from those who disagree and responding personally?

  • Are you using the activity to find and/or train new pro-life advocates?

  • Are you using your event to train other groups (religious or non-religious) on campus?

  • Are you capitalizing on momentum by planning a new event?

Navigation Links: Contents / Intro: Why Trust JFA / 1: Before You Start / 2: What Makes a Good Event? / 3: Invite a JFA Speaker / 4: Invite JFA Training Program / 5: Free Resources / 6: Poll Table / 7: Pro-life Event into a Dialogue Event / 8: Online Resources / 9: Surveys / Printable (Whole Series)

3: Invite a JFA Speaker to Prepare You for One-to-One Conversations

“This was balanced, thoughtful, compassionate, and informative. ”
— Jonathan, after listening to JFA’s Steve Wagner at Yale University in 2016

Why Host a JFA Speaker?

JFA speakers give engaging presentations to equip audiences of all ages to change hearts and minds on abortion.  Each of JFA's speakers brings a wealth of personal stories from hundreds of conversations he or she has had with people who disagree.  JFA's speakers are also trained to teach interactively and to engage both small and large groups with advanced educational methods.  We not only speak from experience, but we also share our stories in a way that moves the intellect as well as the heart.  No matter the venue, we teach in a way that prepares listeners to engage in conversation immediately.

 

Get to Know JFA Speakers and Presentations

  • Speakers:  Get to know Our Team.

  • Presentation Content:  Learn about Speakers and Presentations.

  • How Much Will it Cost?  We will give you a suggested honorarium for making a speaking event happen, but the honorarium is somewhat negotiable. 

  • Stories from JFA Speakers: To read some of the stories our speakers share with audiences, see Stories and Dialogue Examples.

Note: If we can’t send a speaker, we will be happy to suggest another speaker who shares JFA’s concern for balancing love and truth throughout every presentation and conversation.  Contact us at jfa@jfaweb.org or 316-683-6426.  

4: Invite the JFA Training Program, including a Large Outreach Event

“As I reflect on my time with Justice For All, I can confidently and honestly state that it is the best training I have ever received.”
— Angela Erickson, JFA Intern, 2014 (Angela was the St. Cloud State University Students for Life President. After her one-week experience with JFA, she worked with Students for Life of America, directed a pregnancy resource center in Minnesota, and now works for LifeSite News. Find her on Twitter: @AErickson4Life.)

What to Expect

  • Our experienced dialogue artists are also mentors who work alongside you.

  • We train your club and community using a “Seat Work and Feet Work” approach.  Our mentors start by personally leading you through an interactive seminar that prepares you for creating conversations that change hearts and minds.  Then those same mentors join you for the campus outreach event.  Through this process you can watch your mentor in conversation and get feedback from your mentor on conversations you are having. 

 

Why Invite JFA to Your Campus?

  • Our outreach events draw lots of people to consider joining your club during just the 2-3 days we are on campus.  During the events, we collect names and pass them on to you.   

  • Our outreach events give your club something concrete and major to focus on for your year.  This shouldn’t be your only dialogue-focused outreach event, but if you can only do one outreach event, why not make it a big one?

  • Some JFA outreach events are big enough to allow 40-80 volunteers to create conversations in one day on campus.  Consider inviting pro-life clubs from nearby universities to join your club for the JFA events.  It’s exciting to work together to change hearts and minds.

  • Abortion will be a major topic of discussion on campus while JFA is on campus and afterwards.  You’ll have more conversation opportunities than you’ll know what to do with.

  • A JFA outreach event (with accompanying training seminar) will kick-start the remainder of your year or get your club ready for the next year.  It’s a catalyst that will help your club involve more people to do more outreach events throughout the rest of the year.  Your club members will get excited about creating conversations now that they have developed more confidence.  (See, for example, Andrew’s story in “”Confidence Creates Conversations.”)

  • We will give you activities you can do without us after we leave campus.  We will personally mentor you through the process while we’re on your campus, and we’ll continue to pray for you and encourage you afterwards.

  • See “Introduction: Why Should I Trust JFA?” to hear from other club leaders about their experiences with JFA.

 

Get to Know the JFA Training Program

  • Learn More about JFA’s Approach to Training: See JFA's Flagship Dialogue Training page for more information about our flagship training program, which includes an interactive seminar (“Seat Work”) and outreach event (“Feet Work“”).

  • Learn More about JFA’s Campus Outreach Events: See JFA's Campus Exhibit Outreach Events page for more information about our campus exhibit outreach events, which are essential to our flagship training program.

  • Read Real JFA Conversations in Dialogue Form: For conversation stories from JFA outreach events, see Dialogue Examples.

  • How Much Will it Cost?  We will give you a suggested honorarium for making this event happen, but the honorarium is somewhat negotiable.  Don’t let the fear of cost deter you from contacting Justice For All to explore what’s possible in terms of bringing JFA to your campus.  In some cases, we can find supporters to fund an event.  In other cases, we can help you find funding you didn’t know was available.

“I can think of no better environment in which to receive an education on pro-life ministry and the issues surrounding abortion, and no better environment in which to consistently help make a difference for the unborn and their parents.”
— Holly Fugate, JFA Intern, 2013-2014 (Inspired by her first JFA experience, Holly brought members of the Wheaton College Voice for Life club to a JFA seminar and outreach event at Georgia Tech during their 2013 Spring Break.  After graduating, Holly completed a year-long internship with JFA.)

5: Free Resources You Can Use to Equip Your Club

Not finding time on the calendar or feeling ready to invite a JFA speaker or JFA's Training Program?  The following free resources can help.

Resources from Justice For All

 

Recommended Resources from Trusted Friends of JFA

6: JFA-Style Poll Table: Small Outreach Event, Big Impact

Note: You might want to read “1: Before Your Club Starts Choosing Pro-Life Activities” and “2: What Makes a Good Pro-Life Event?” first.

“From just tabling and polling campus every week for a year we have had hundreds and hundreds of conversations… The conversions from pro-life to pro-choice are so many that we have stopped counting… All it took was us being present and consistent... We have had six people, last semester, not get abortions because they came to our table.”
— Kandace, 2012, Louisiana State University (LSU)

Goals

Kandace was a leader in her pro-life club at LSU.  One of the club’s mainstay events was a weekly “poll table” outreach event.  She learned about poll tables when she volunteered with JFA.  Soon, she and her club were holding an outreach event every week on Free Speech Alley at LSU.  Yes, you heard that right: every week.  You can do the same.  Here are some goals a poll table event can help you accomplish:

  • Create a dialogue about abortion in a highly trafficked area of a college campus.

  • Learn about student attitudes toward abortion and start conversations that change minds.

  • Gain email addresses of students interested in the student group.

  • Gain email addresses of students who disagree with you, to continue the conversation.

 

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1: Reserve a Table Space

  • Apply to the appropriate office for permission to set up a table in your selected area.

  • Inform the administration of your start time, end time, and materials you’ll be giving away.

  • Request a table or purchase your own folding table for this and future events.

Step 2: Prepare to Dialogue

Step 3: Prepare Your Materials and Plan Your Schedule

For this, plan a meeting of 1-2 hours.  One hour may be all you need here.

Materials:

  • Three pieces of 20” x 30” foam-core poster board

    • The sturdier the better (colors are better, as well)

    • Or, make this a double-sided table (two directions of traffic) by prepping twice as many signs. See photos below for ideas on making the table double-sided!

    • We use fat Sharpie markers and paint pens to make these signs.

    • We laminate these signs or, at least, we put packing tape on the edges, so that when we tape the signs to the table or to each other we aren’t taping directly on the sign (which would damage the sign later in the day when we take down).

Two pads of paper (notebooks work as well)

  • One pad of paper with labels on the tops of EACH page (prep 3-5 pieces of paper per pad). Or, prep two pads per side to make this a double-sided table (two directions of traffic).

  • Write “Yes” at the top of one pad. Put a place for NAME, EMAIL (for results of poll), and WHY?

  • Write “NO” at the top of the other with NAME, EMAIL (for results of poll), and WHY?

Pens for the pads of paper

  • Accurate pictures of the unborn and abortion

    • Use the Justice For All Brochure and JFA smart phone resources which provide links to fetal development and abortion images.

      • You can use the JFA Exhibit Brochure in two ways at your event. You can have just enough on hand to keep a few at the table to use during conversations. It’s best, however, to consider having enough on hand (20 per hour of outreach) to give them to people who express an interest in receiving one (we ask people, “Would you like a copy of the JFA Exhibit Brochure that we’ve been looking at?”)

    • See especially these pages online: What Is the Unborn? and What is Abortion? (Have these on hand to refer to in conversations. Warn before showing.)

    • Another resource we highlight that you should use: www.ehd.org/apps

  • Clipboard with club signup (name, major, class year, email address, preferred social media handle, cell number, etc.). Place this on the “No” side so it’s readily at hand when you get in a conversation with a pro-life person and want to encourage him/her to sign up for your club emails or to get involved

Plan Your Schedule

  • Two people should be present at the table at all times. Four people at one time can have plenty to do, though, since you’ll probably have about 1 person each minute signing the poll in a heavily-trafficked area at lunch time. So, if you start a conversation with one of those people that takes 30 minutes, and another club member starts a conversation with the next person, you can see that even if some people aren’t interested in conversation, you can generate more conversations than four people can handle.

  • Note, though, that there’s a saturation point at which too many conversations happening at the table may impede traffic, and then you may be asked by administration to change something so that traffic can flow. We tend to think a crowd discussing abortion is a good thing, but we also think it’s important to respect the administration’s reasonable concerns about student safety.

Step 4: Ask JFA and Other Friends to Pray

  • Obviously, if your club is a secular or non-theistic club, you won’t be drawn to this item, so feel free to skip it if it doesn’t apply to you. You can still let JFA know you’re doing a poll table, and we’ll encourage you!

  • If your club thinks it is a good idea, we suggest each club member use email or Facebook (or other medium) to ask a few friends to be praying during the time you’ve set aside for outreach. We believe that good arguments and good dialogue skills are important tools, but that ultimately God changes minds and hearts by his Spirit.

Step 5: Do the Event

  • Meet to pray and set up materials 30 minutes in advance.

  • Suggested minimum club members: 2 at any one time.

  • Suggested maximum: 6 at any one time. (Or others could sit a ways away and pray, take pictures, etc.)

Step 6: Follow Up

  • After the event, first, tally up the poll. You’ll send this tally to all of the email addresses you collected. You’ll have lots of email addresses on the “No” and “Yes” sides. You can’t assume all of the “No” respondents have the exact same views on abortion that you do, and you can’t assume the “Yes” respondents don’t agree with you on anything.

  • For the “No” respondents, send the results of the poll and 1-4 sentences about your club, including the next meeting time, the mission of your club, and why someone should consider coming to a meeting. We suggest including what you’ll equip them to do if they come to a club meeting. Make sure to give contact information for the club (email address, Facebook page, phone number) so they can get questions answered.

    • Suggestion: In this email or in a follow-up, perhaps ask a specific question such as, “Would you like to be involved in pro-life activities on campus?”  That way, the person sending the emails can get immediate feedback on people who are clearly interested.  We’ve found this helpful for following up with students.  They seem more likely to respond if they are asked something directly.  We’ve found the “direct question” most helpful if we’re sending to a blind list of emails and we want to know who would want to be involved.

  • For the “Yes” respondents, send them the results of the poll, and an invitation to dialogue further at the poll table in the future (or give a contact email for the club in case they want to have further conversation).

  • When you send the results to anyone, make sure to include the disclaimer that “this is an informal poll, and we are not suggesting that it is representative of anyone beyond the respondents to the poll.”

  • Let JFA know how your event went by emailing or calling your contact at JFA, by posting to Facebook (tag JFA’s Facebook Page), or by filling out our “Share Your JFA Story” form. 

Step 7: Repeat!

  • Self-explanatory :)

Possible Additions to the Poll Table Event

  • Surveys: JFA staff and volunteers often use surveys to start conversations during our campus outreach events. To learn more about our surveys, learn how to use them at your event, and to request copies contact JFA at 316-683-6426 or jfa@jfaweb.org.

 

Examples of Poll Tables

Traditional JFA Poll Tables

Negatives: Maximum of two people signing on each side of poll at one time.

Positives: Gives a club an easy way to capture email addresses (send the results of poll with invitation to join club email list, come to a club event, etc).

A “Rainy Day” Alternative:

Substitute popsicle sticks for pads of paper.   People write their reason on the popsicle stick and push the stick into the foam board.  Some people do this with a lot of gusto!

Negatives: Doesn’t give you an easy way to capture email addresses.

Positives: Multiple people can register their opinion at once.

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7: Turn any Pro-Life Outreach Event into a Dialogue Event.

VIDEO: Steve Wagner, Josh Brahm, and Gabi Vehrs discuss several common pro-life outreach activities. 

Steve Wagner from Justice For All joins Josh Brahm and Gabi Vehrs to discuss what Students for Life clubs should do with their events. Steve argues that every event should create a debate about abortion that can be turned into a dialogue.

8: JFA’s Online Resources – A Selection

  1. What Is the Unborn?

  2. What Is Abortion?

  3. What Are the Facts?

  4. Links for Dialogue

  5. Extending Your Learning

  6. Interactive Guide (Includes JFA’s main seminar material, plus 176 additional pages)

  7. JFA Trainer Certification Assignments

  8. Videos on pro-life strategy (in conjunction with Josh Brahm, now of Equal Rights Institute)

9: Surveys