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ABOUT WORTH JUSTICE
Humanity Is Worth Fighting For.
We believe humanity is not an abstraction. Human worth and belonging are inherent—and the ways we lead, communicate, build community, and structure our institutions should reflect that truth.
WHY WE EXIST
Center Humanity.
Words Create Worlds.
Worth Justice was born from a conviction that transformation requires more than programs, policies, or practices. It requires examining the language, discourse, beliefs, narratives, relationships, power structures, and systems that shape how we understand ourselves, one another, and the world we share.
We recognize that discourse does more than communicate ideas. It shapes perceptions, reinforces assumptions, legitimizes power, and influences how humanity is understood, valued, and treated.
Rather than organizing our work solely around harm, we center the humanity that exists before harm, persists through it, and must remain visible beyond it.
To center humanity is not to avoid accountability. It is to refuse the idea that accountability requires us to abandon humanity.
BELONGING IS INHERENT
We Have Been Belonging the Whole Time.
Belonging is inherent. It is not something an institution, leader, organization, or community grants us. Nor is it something people must earn through assimilation, performance, proximity to power, or conformity to dominant ways of knowing and being.
Our work asks a different question: What has taught us not to recognize the belonging that was already there? We examine the narratives, discourse, practices, relationships, and power structures that obscure human worth, privilege certain ways of knowing and being, and condition people's participation in communities and institutions.
This understanding shapes how we approach leadership, education, community engagement, healing, and restorative praxis. We do not position ourselves as experts who enter communities to give people something they lack. We honor lived experience, Indigenous and Afrocentric ways of knowing, relational wisdom, and the knowledge communities already carry while creating opportunities to interrogate what has been normalized and imagine what becomes possible when humanity is fully recognized.
Belonging is not the destination of our work. It is the truth from which our work begins.
OUR APPROACH
From Recognition to Transformation.
Our approach begins with recognition: of our own humanity, the humanity of others, the knowledge people and communities already carry, and the narratives and conditions shaping how we encounter one another.
We understand transformation as relational and interconnected. What happens within us is connected to what happens between us, within our communities and institutions, and across the discourses, cultures, and systems that shape our shared lives. Rather than isolating one person, incident, or problem, we widen the lens to examine relationships, histories, power, context, and the conditions influencing what has become normalized.
This means our work is both reflective and transformative. We create opportunities to examine self without separating self from community, engage relationships without ignoring power, interrogate discourse without disconnecting it from culture, and address systems without losing sight of the people living within them.
THE WAYMAKERS
Meet the People Behind the Work.
L'Tomay Varlack-Butler, PhD, MSW
Director, Office of Beloved Community Praxis
Sage Waymaker, Board of Directors
L’Tomay brings scholarship, lived experience, and organizational strategy together to help people and institutions examine the narratives, practices, and power structures that shape how humanity is seen, heard, valued, and treated. Her doctoral research in education for social justice examined restorative justice discourse in higher education, deepening a body of work that challenges performative approaches to belonging, accountability, and institutional change. Through Worth Justice’s Office of Beloved Community Praxis, she develops humanity-centered frameworks, learning experiences, and strategies that invite individuals and organizations beyond awareness toward the courageous work of transformation. At the heart of her work is a simple conviction: meaningful change requires more than changing what we do; it requires examining what we have learned to believe about ourselves, one another, and whose humanity matters.
D'Ajani Varlack-Butler, MSW, MPS
CEO & Chief Waymaker
D’Ajani brings social work, theological formation, organizational leadership, and a deeply relational approach to his role at Worth Justice. As Chief Waymaker, he provides executive leadership and stewardship while helping create the conditions for vision to become sustainable practice. His work is grounded in the belief that leadership is not simply about directing organizations, but about making pathways for people, relationships, and communities to move toward greater dignity, accountability, and possibility. Drawing from his professional and lived experience, D’Ajani helps hold together the operational and human dimensions of Worth Justice—ensuring that the organization’s commitment to humanity is reflected not only in what it teaches publicly, but also in how it leads, partners, makes decisions, and builds community.
CONTINUE THE JOURNEY
Humanity becomes more than a value when we practice it.
Whether you're here to deepen your learning, transform the way you lead, or engage with Worth Justice, there is a pathway for you.
LEARN | TRANSFORM | ENGAGE
Words Create Worlds.
“What we normalize through discourse shapes what we come to accept as possible.”
~Dr. L'Tomay Varlack-Butler
From Relational Practice to Systemic Transformation.
“Transformation requires more than responding to harm. It requires changing the practices, structures, and relationships that shape how we live together.”
~D'Ajani Varlack-Butler
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