Growing with the Movement

Three weeks ago I joined about 150 individuals from all over the country at IFYC’s Interfaith Leadership Institute (ILI) in Atlanta. It was an exciting moment for me, because I saw the ILI as part of a relationship with IFYC going back five years, shortly after I got involved in interfaith work as an undergraduate. Now I was attending the ILI as a staff ally, working for a university trying to support the nascent interfaith movement on campus.

Back in 2007, Eboo Patel and Cassie Meyer visited the university where I was doing my undergraduate work. I had been involved in starting a student interfaith organization two years before and felt like we were relatively alone, or at least isolated from great work taking place at other colleges in other cities. Our student group had the opportunity to meet with Eboo, which motivated and inspired us. We felt connected to a larger, growing movement.

The following year, I was accepted into the second cohort of IFYC’s Fellows Alliance, an interfaith leadership development program that focused on supporting about 20 student leaders on campuses across the country over the course of an academic year. The previous fall, shortly after Eboo’s visit, I was also able to attend IFYC’s 5th National Conference on Interfaith Youth Work. It was an amazing opportunity to hear from students and staff involved in interfaith work across the country, gain encouragement from successes and brainstorm around shared challenges.

While both the conference and the Fellows Alliance have ended, they have contributed so many successful elements to the relatively new ILIs. From the Fellows Alliance comes training and support from the knowledgeable IFYC staff; from the National Conference comes opportunities to engage with others in the interfaith movement and build a support network of peers for students and for staff. Taken together, they magnify the movement, increasing the impact of IFYC’s work as is radiates out though the interpersonal connections we have formed.

It’s a reminder that we’re not just connected to the movement – we are a part of the movement. Each of us is growing individually, and all of us are growing together. It was that meeting with Eboo almost five years ago that inspired me to pursue interfaith work as a career. In that time I have transitioned from being a student activist on a small, private, faith-based university to being a staff employee at a large, public, research institution – and IFYC has been there supporting me along the way. We have both grown to face new challenges, and gained new partners.

After the ILI, I see in my students what I experienced myself years ago and now feel again: motivation, inspiration, and connection to a movement that is drawing the circle of inclusion wider, furthering peaceful coexistence, and making religious pluralism a social norm.

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