FAQ on Our New Name

We changed our name to ASJ to honor our partnership with Honduras and our shared commitment to seeking justice together. This change better points to our Honduran roots and the focus of our work. Our work began in Honduras, and we continue to follow the lead of ASJ-Honduras.

This name change also reflects our shared work for justice. When our U.S. organization was founded, we chose to go by the initials AJS, which stood for the English translation of our Spanish name. As our joint justice efforts have increased and our international presence has grown, it became apparent that we needed to address the confusion about whether we were known as ASJ or AJS. Being known by one name would help us both for practical reasons and also to be able to share who we are as a joint organization.

Yes! Our vision and mission remain the same. ASJ-US continues to work together with ASJ-Honduras to create a more just society. 

We strive to be brave Christians dedicated to doing justice in Honduras and to inspiring others around the world to seek justice in their own contexts. To do this, we:

• Collaborate with, learn from, and advocate alongside our partner organization ASJ-Honduras to promote peace, justice, and the transformation of society and government in Honduras.
• Share our experience in Honduras with communities of justice seekers in order to learn together and advance best practices in justice work worldwide. 
• Challenge and inspire Christians to live out the Biblical call to do justice and to effect change in their own communities.

We love that our new logo is both simple and dynamic, representing a path towards justice. It conveys movement towards a more just society.

ASJ stands for the Association for a More Just Society in Spanish (la Asociación para una Sociedad Más Justa). 

Don’t worry! You can still write your checks the way you have in the past. 

We are able to accept checks made out to “AJS”, “ASJ”, “ASJ-US”, or “The Association for a More Just Society”.

ASJ’s work is done through two sister organizations, but we share a collective vision of Brave Christians working together for a more just society. 

• ASJ-Honduras leads our groundbreaking justice initiatives in Honduras, putting this work into action day-to-day by meeting with government officials, writing reforms, providing legal aid to individuals and communities, and advocating alongside civil society groups. 
• ASJ-US amplifies this mission through mutual collaboration, financial and prayer support, and by sharing our vision with justice-seekers around the world. 

The two organizations have separate staffs, separate boards of directors, and separate budgets, but we do many things together: 

• ASJ-US provides financial support to ASJ-Honduras. We are one of approximately 15 organizations that fund ASJ-Honduras’s work, providing flexible funding to meet the organization’s most pressing needs. We also financed the new office building in Tegucigalpa to provide Honduran staff with a safe and secure space where they can collaborate with other civil society groups working for justice. 
• Together, we advocate in Washington D.C. for U.S. policies that help create a more just society in Honduras. We also create joint publications and justice education initiatives, seeking to share our model and our theory of change with other justice-seekers around the world. 
• ASJ-US has staff and fellows based in Honduras to be able to share stories of what’s happening in Honduras, to host journalists and practitioners visiting ASJ, and to provide support to Honduran staff through research and English-language support.

You can tell them that ASJ is a group of brave Christians dedicated to working for a more just society in Honduras and around the world. 

In Honduras, ASJ works to reform government systems like education, health, and security to ensure that they represent the needs of the most vulnerable. ASJ also shares its systemic reform model with justice-seekers around the globe and challenges people to actively stand up for justice in their own context. 

Over the last two years, a committee has worked hard to make sure the voices of our constituents were heard and given the opportunity to provide input on our new name and logo. In order to do this well, we surveyed 56 supporters and hosted a focus group video call with 15 supporters. In addition, we researched other international non-profit brands to learn how other organizations manage an international joint identity. This was done in partnership between ASJ-Honduras and ASJ-US in order to ensure that the identity of both organizations was represented in the new brand. We are grateful for all the input that was gathered and helped to guide our decision to change our name to ASJ.  

Our work for justice began in Tegucigalpa Honduras in 1998 (Check out this timeline with throwback photos!), when a group of Honduran and North American friends developed a vision for justice in Honduras. After years of working in development, ASJ’s founders realized that despite their best efforts, their initiatives were failing because too many laws, policies, and systems in Honduras did not respect the needs and rights of the poor. In short, these efforts failed because of injustice. Since 1998, ASJ-Honduras has worked to promote justice in Honduras, especially for the poor and the oppressed.

ASJ-US (formerly known as AJS) was founded in the United States in 2000 as a sister organization to ASJ-Honduras. ASJ-US was created to amplify our work in Honduras through financial and prayer support and by sharing our vision with justice-seekers around the world. 

Together, ASJ forms a movement of brave Christians working for a more just society in Honduras and around the world. 

See the timeline of our history. 

ASJ-Canada has an established board of directors and is currently pursuing its non-profit status. 

For more information, please contact  asj.canada.board@gmail.com.