By NICK BUDD
Hays Post

Brilliant, fun, a critical thinker, happy, and even a little difficult sometimes.

Those are just a few words Christie Brungardt uses to describe her late daughter, Jana Mackey. On July 3, 2008, the world lost that brilliant, fun, and happy girl in an act of domestic violence when Mackey was killed by an ex-boyfriend.

While the tragedy stung the Hays family, approximately a year and a half later, they decided to do something about it with the creation of Jana’s Campaign. The advocacy group, which has reached 19 states and hundreds of thousands of individuals, recently reached its five-year anniversary.

“When we started this thing, we didn’t know exactly what we were going to be doing, but we knew we had to do something,” Curt Brungardt said. “We knew we had a lot of learning to do and if we waited until we knew everything, we wouldn’t ever get started, so we came up with the strategy to learn and adapt.”

The Brungardts announced the creation of Jana’s Campaign on Dec. 10, 2009, but Jana was working on the issue long before her death. Before that fateful day, she graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in Woman’s Studies and spent time in Topeka and Washington lobbying for legislation aimed at issues related to domestic violence. After Jana’s death, the Brungardts ended up using this as a calling to help defeat gender-based violence.

“Because of who (Jana) was, we knew we had to do something,” said Curt Brungardt. “Jana’s story makes it personal. If people can relate to a person, story or a face, we believe people will be much more responsive.”

Since its inception, the campaign has reached out to thousands of people in 19 states. The campaign has also supported initiatives such as Walk A Mile In Her Shoes, Jana’s Closet, the Hays Arts Council and Options Domestic and Sexual Violence Services. They  now have a board of directors and a staff, and are recognized as an official non-profit. Even though their work has touched many victims of gender-based violence, the Brungardts say their goal is to prevent it from happening in the first place.

“Historically, people have just thought about taking care of the victims,” said Christie Brungardt. “As important and critical as that is, there hasn’t been a lot of work in the area of prevention and education, so that’s what we’ve really focused on.

“It’s what we do and it’s what we believe is going to have to happen much more often if we want to eradicate gender-based violence.”

The Brungardts admit they did not believe the work of the campaign would grow to the point it has and attribute a large part of that success to the Hays community.

“People are recognizing how important this prevention and education work is and we’re so appreciative to this community here in Hays,” said Christie Brungardt.

“We were also so surprised with how much of a role the university has played in this,” Curt Brungardt added. “Our supervisors have been very supportive of our efforts, and they see it as an extension of our service-learning programming.”

As leadership instructors at Fort Hays State University, both Curt and Christie said they would be “hypocritical” if they didn’t do something about it after Jana’s death. The leadership classes at FHSU focus on service learning, where students help local and statewide non-profits with issues and programming.

“We both tell young people if something goes wrong in their home, school or community, they have an obligation to go do something about it and try to make that better,” said Christie Brungardt. “We both believed that we would be so hypocritical if something like this happened and we didn’t do something.”

As the organization continues to grow and educate others, the Brungardts hope their movement can grow to a national level.

“My goal is that we can build an organization that can work without Curt and Christie,” said Curt Brungardt. “Several organizations dwindle down once their founders run out of energy. It is my hope that when we retire, we can watch this organization from a distance.

“That is my deep desire–to build something that is powerful, impactful–and that Jana’s story moves beyond us. I hope we can sit back in rocking chairs and smile.”

Jana’s Campaign recently began a “Love Doesn’t Hurt”, a campaign for middle and high schoolers about the dangers of domestic violence.