Sensing that you and your community make a difference can feel deeply satisfying. But if you rarely feel that way, how do you get there? It is tempting to analyze the problems to death. Instead, the workshops below examine what it takes to make interfaith work vital and alive.

WORKSHOPS

• ASSEMBLY 3 - What Does It Take to Make a Difference?
  Plenary Session - All Attending

  What is the alchemy that transforms good intentions into a new and better world? In this workshop, we turn to three Bay Area interfaith pioneers, women representing different religious backgrounds who have made a difference in this region. After briefly telling their stories, they will weigh in on what is most important when we implement our dreams to create a better world. Dr. Singh, himself an interfaith activist in Ohio and the world, will moderate this panel and lead the discussion that follows.

  Nahid Angha, Rita Semel, Grace O’Brian, and Tarunjit Singh Butalia (moderator)

• Being Able to Influence the World
  It is tempting for grassroots groups to feel powerless to influence or change things, whatever they do. Based on the pioneering work of peacemaker Jean Paul Lederach, this workshop focuses on the power within the web of relationships among small groups of people and the influence these groups can wield for good when they tune into that power.

  Sally Mahe

• Can Interfaith Work Create Real Social Change?
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  An interactive conversation about ways that interfaith work can create measurable social change. Topics include social entrepreneurship, strategic partnering, community assets, and youth-driven approaches. Interfaith Works will give examples from its recovery work in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, including “Inspired to Serve,” the first federally-funded interfaith youth project, nationally directed by Search Institute and Interfaith Youth Core. You are invited to share your stories and visions. You are also invited to get in on the ground floor of a new Institute for Faith & Service incubating with the Points of Light Foundation and looking to partner with and resource interfaith groups interested in on-the-ground changemaking.

  Jessica Kent, Nancy Murray and Erik Schwarz

• Chaplaincy in Public Places – the Frontline of Interfaith Dialogue
  Interfaith dialogue about matters of life and death are an everyday activity for chaplains in the public arena. This workshop brings together chaplains from various constituencies including the college campus, veterans returning from war, hospital patients, and the incarcerated. Our presenters come from Baha'i', Buddhist, Christian, and Neo-Pagan traditions, moderated by a Jewish rabbi, himself a chaplain. Each have been pioneers in bringing pastoral care to people of all faiths and practices. These chaplains will share their interfaith perspectives and what it means to their ministries.

  Joseph Bobrow, Peter Yuichi Clark, Jay Heyman, Patrick McCollum, and Jan Saeed

• Engaging Peace: A Case Study of Toledo’s Erase-the-Hate Youth Contests
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  How can interfaith communities make a tangible positive difference throughout a community? At the local level, the challenge can feel gargantuan. In Toledo, the interfaith community turned to the creativity of young people as an antidote to reducing hate crimes. Young adults were challenged to compete – using video, poetry, and posters – to help turn the tide on local violence, and the whole city got involved. This workshop is a case study of the Toledo project and will invite others to share their own stories and suggestions for transformational engagement of the larger community.

  Woody & Judy Trautman

• Fostering Green Religious Communities – California Interfaith Power and Light & Beyond
  California Interfaith Power and Light (CIPL) was born in San Francisco in January 2001. Rev. Sally G. Bingham, an Episcopal priest, and her colleagues called all religious traditions to be faithful stewards of Creation. After working with thousands of congregations in California, a national expression of the ministry took off, The Regeneration Project. We will hear the story of how one’s priest’s inspiration has sparked a new level of grassroots environmental activism in American religion. And you and your faith community will be challenged to join the movement!

  Charlotte Myers

• Greening Our Lives & Healing the Earth
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  NAIN's local service project at this year's connect is the Jewish World Watch Solar Cooker Project. At this talk-while-we-work session, we will build sample solar cookers while we discuss a variety of practical ideas and realistic solutions to environmental -- and social -- crises. Jewish World Watch has placed over 18,000 solar cookers in Darfur refugee camps. Solar cookers are not just fuel saving, they are saving the women (mostly Muslim) from rape while collecting fire wood outside the camps! . Our assembled solar cookers will be used to cook treats for conferees. Supplies will be given to take the cooker project home to teach others about this low-tech treasure.

  Bettina Gray, Communications Chair, NAIN
  Rachel Andres, Solar Cookers Project of Jewish World Watch

• Interfaith Activism which Doesn’t Divide the Community
  Local interfaith groups are frequently frustrated when faced with political issues. They hate to dodge controversial issues but do so, often as a matter of policy, because some traditions walk out when anything political is involved. This workshop features leaders who are developing ways to respond to political realities without alienating constituents. Rabbi Miller will moderate, in addition to being a presenter.

  Jay Miller, Sam Muyskens, Len Traubman, and Ginny Wagener

• Interfaith Personal Relationships: Gifts, Challenges and Blessings
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  This interactive workshop explores the emotional, spiritual, and practical challenges and blessings interfaith couples experience at different stages in relationship. How can we best support and inspire healthy, satisfying interfaith relationships? Our discussion will reflect a broad spectrum of interfaith couples – multi-racial, married or living together, LGBT, religious/atheist, seeker/skeptic, and various spiritual combinations.

  Karen Erlichman

• Islamic Networks Group - A Profile
  Fifteen years ago an Egyptian American woman named Maha ElGenaidi started a speakers bureau to educate American citizens about Islam in the Bay Area. Today ING facilitates thousands of educational presentations. The newest phase in Islamic Networks Group (ING) has been to create an Interfaith Speakers Bureau as well, using their tried and true model on behalf of interfaith education. Come hear how this extraordinary adventure got started, the vision for its future, and how you can get involved. Clips from ING’s “Getting to Know American Muslims” presentation that integrates interfaith content. Upi can visit ING’s website at www.ing.org.

  Grace Fong and Fouzi Husani

• MDGs - Interreligious Community Sought in Helping End Poverty
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  The United Nations unanimous vote in 2000 supporting eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is the most concise yet universal call to end the bone-crunching poverty so very many endure and make a world that is comfortable for all. This workshop surveys the goals and how religious communities everywhere are working to meet them. Successful religious support to date will be reported and resources provided for taking the goals to your own community and beginning to generate support.

  Herb Behrstock, Jon Denn, and George Wesolek

• Reuniting the Children of Abraham Project
  “Reuniting the Children of Abraham” is a new kind of peace initiative that emerged from the dialogue of Christian, Muslim and Jewish teens after 9/11. The widely awarded program is an engaging multi-media toolkit. It includes power point presentation developed on the shared historical roots of the three religions and how prejudice and stereotyping contribute to violence in our world and a documentary of how Christian, Muslim and Jewish teens replaced ignorance, fear and hate with understanding through a four-step healing process. Hear the story and learn how you can become involved.

  Brenda Naomi Rosenberg

• Using Appreciative Inquiry & Digital Stortytelling as Tools for Building Interfaith Collaboration
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  Workshop participants will be taken on a journey into the worlds of Appreciative Inquiry and Digital Storytelling. They will see examples of how AI and new technologies can build bridges across faith and cultural boundaries. The workshop focuses on how relationships between individuals, communities, and societies can be created and re-created through sharing stories. And on how technology can be used to connect people across all boundaries, faiths, and religions.

  Friends in Faith – Marla Kolman Antebi, Corbin Davis, Fred Fielding, and Steve Naylor