#IPM52 #LoveYourNeighbor #WelcomeTheStranger

Warm New Year greetings from all of us at IPM! I hope that you are safe & well wherever this letter finds you.

As we begin 2026, I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude for your generous support throughout the past year. At a time of increasing uncertainty, conflict, and division, your commitment to IPM has remained a steady and life giving source of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love for our Partners and the communities they accompany. You remind us—every single day—that you are truly IPM’s greatest gift.

For more than five decades, IPM has remained faithful to its founding vision: a counter narrative to top down mission models, rooted instead in authentic partnership, dignity, and shared leadership. Your generosity sustains this revolutionary approach. It ensures that predominantly women led, community based initiatives across the globe continue to flourish, empowering our Partners to be the authors of their own histories, liberation, and possibilities.

At the heart of our mission & vision remains IPM’s commitment to accompany those on the margins of our global society. Our founding families were clearly inspired by the Civil Rights & Equal Rights movements of their day and the anti-colonial struggles of their time. Today, we are being challenged once more to be about, as Jim Mayer explained, “a process of liberating education which introduces North Americans to the global realities of poverty & injustice and challenges them with a new vision of society grounded in justice & love,” (as written on a plaque commemorating him at the Casa Jaime Mayer in Managua, Nicaragua).

Over forty years since Jim’s tragic passing, the realities of poverty & injustice are hitting home for us again across the USA. The dehumanization of our immigrant & refugee neighbors is completely counter to the faith of our founders and the multi-faith principals of welcoming the stranger & loving our neighbors. When US Citizens are being murdered by ill-trained agents of the state, asylum-seeking families are separated, imprisoned, & repatriated without due process, and even children are being brutalized as bait, we know well that we have drifted far from a society grounded in justice & love.

When I first began my tenure with IPM I spent many a workday and Sunday morning in Minneapolis & Saint Paul. Progressive Lutheran & like-minded communities of faith in the Twin Cities were—along with Chicago, Milwaukee, and others—at the heart of our new vision. The people I met and the Pastors I knew, & still know, were/are animated by the same Midwestern kindness & welcome I experienced as a child. While their deep Lutheran roots were slightly different than my own Catholic upbringing, they created communities of hospitality & solidarity that resonated well with what I had learned in my own journey of faith. They were & remain an inspiration at a time when our federal government has foregone this nation’s founding principles of due process, freedom of assembly, and freedom of speech.

IPM remains rooted in the same Midwestern sense of the decency & the common good that we are all witnessing on our screens. From Minneapolis to Cleveland, from Appleton to Saint Louis, we are called, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King reminded us, to bring light to darkness and to conquer hate with love. Renee Nicole Good & Alex Pretti died doing just that. What must we do to ensure that their deaths, like those of King & the North American Churchwomen in El Salvador, were not in vain.

In my role with IPM I don’t often speak specifically of my personal faith, let alone my role as the Pastor of a UCC Congregation in Maine; but, in these days with both Maine & Minnesota under siege, I am leaning on & into my faith more than ever. Each day feels increasingly similar to when I attended Divinity School in the late ‘80’s and, frankly, sometimes I feel like the last four decades have brought little change. How are we still living in a nation that forcibly separates children from their legally resident immigrant & refugee parents, intentionally targets people of color for summary arrest & incarceration, and murders peacefully protesting US citizens in our city streets?

As IPM and so many of our partner organizations across the USA work to respond in the most appropriate & effective ways, we know that similar political upheaval and violence persist in so many of the countries & communities where we work. From Colombia to Kenya, Nepal to the USA, your thoughtful solidarity allows IPM to continue the difficult, essential work of ensuring change & nurturing peace. You make it possible for our International Fellows, Project Partners, and Leadership Team to accompany communities often at great risk, to speak out for love & light in the face of injustice, and to do so with empathy, respect, and unwavering love.

When I have the privilege of being in your presence &/or speaking with you by phone, you tell me that you remain committed to IPM because of the spirit that radiates from our Partners, Fellows, Staff, and Volunteers. Our shared purpose of joining hands across borders, cultures, and experiences to build a more just and hope filled world keeps this dream aflame even in these dark times.

As 2026 unfolds, may you continue to find Peace amid discord, Joy in moments of challenge, Hope in the vision that has guided IPM for 52 years, and Love at the heart of every relationship that sustains our shared mission. May we live up to the vision of our founders and where we are being called today.

With profound gratitude for your partnership and all you make possible, I remain faithfully yours,

Joseph F. Cistone
Chief Executive Officer ... See MoreSee Less