This post appeared in the “Movement in Action” section of the Interfaith Youth Core’s October email newsletter:
For most ordinary jobs, training or orientation usually denotes a few hours, perhaps a day or two, devoted to learning the ins and outs of one’s new organization. The Faiths Act Fellows trained for six weeks on three continents. This is not an ordinary job.
The Faiths Act Fellows were assembled like some sort of top-secret strike force, recruited from universities and community organizations across the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. Each one of us brings a wealth of experience. Many have excelled at interfaith peace building. More than a few speak multiple languages. Some of us have even spent time in the developing world working to increase the fortunes of its peoples.
During our London training, we learned what it meant to be ambassadors for the Millennium Development Goals. We spent long hours on the theories behind coalition-building and malaria advocacy work and formed mutually-inspiring friendships across faith lines. In between visits to various houses of worship, we snuck in strategic planning sessions.
From there we split into three teams and traveled to Mali, Malawi, and Tanzania to see malaria’s effects and to meet the people for whom the disease is a constant worry. Some teams practically lived in hospitals or research facilities. Others spent their days meeting with local interfaith groups doing malaria eradication work on a micro scale.
The Fellows then returned to Chicago to share what we learned and to figure out how to tell the world about malaria. Eboo Patel told us that we were the vanguard of a new global movement. We met with Tony Blair, who told us very seriously that he was inspired and amazed by the work that we already have done and are going to do.
We are social entrepreneurs: We have seen need in our communities and beyond and we are working to end that need. Up until now we have been single actors, connected only by a loose sense of mission. But now, tied together not just by a mission but by the common values of our various religious traditions, thirty young leaders are constructing “hubs” of multifaith understanding, cooperation, and action. In cities stretching from San Jose, California to London, United Kingdom, we are laying the groundwork for an international coalition that is moving, quickly, to eradicate malaria deaths.
The Faiths Act Fellows have trained on many levels. We have come to know our enemy malaria very well, but we have come to know our friends even better. These friends are scientists, rabbis, activists, priests, imams, teachers, community organizers, and of course each other. But our best friends, I think, are the people who we met on our travels. Malaria is a real danger for them. Now it’s personal.
I once referred to the Fellowship in a unitary sense as “a 60-armed, 30-mouthed intercontinental juggernaut with a bone to pick with malaria”. On October 1, we began our work across the world.
No related posts.
Pingback: Physical insanity | In the Hand of Dante