The Fellows Alliance is an intensive year-long leadership development initiative designed to empower the most promising young interfaith leaders on American university and college campuses. By building Fellows’ leadership capacity, supporting their work on campus, and providing them with networks and resources as alumni, we empower these young leaders to advance significant interfaith initiatives and influence key institutions during and after their fellowship experience.
Bridge-Builders
Bridge-builder’s Network connects interfaith leaders from across the world. Staffed and managed at IFYC, the network equips these leaders with the most current resources and best practices. The network serves as a virtual town square and online hub of a growing global movement. Join here: http://bridge-builders.ning.com
Outreach Education and Training
IFYC staff travel the globe spreading the message of interfaith action and training the next generation of interfaith leaders. Intensive skills-based trainings provide young people and their allies with the tools necessary for building interfaith relationships, organizing service-learning projects, and publicly advocating religious pluralism.
Faiths Act Fellows
The Faiths Act Fellowship brings together thirty young leaders of different faith traditions for a 10-month journey of interfaith action. The Fellows, hailing from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, are mobilizing diverse faith communities to achieve the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals, with a particular focus, the eradication of deaths from malaria. Their work is raising the profile of malaria as a deadly but preventable disease that kills up to one million people each year, most less than five years of age. In addition, this Fellowship program will yield lasting bonds of friendship through cooperative action while erasing historic lines of division and ignorance.
Conference Scholarships
IFYC hosts a gathering of the interfaith movement every 2 years. 500 of the best and brightest students, academics, youth workers, policy makers, NGO representatives, and philanthropists gather to learn, network and plan the next steps for the interfaith movement. IFYC provides full scholarships to this event for 50 students from American universities and for 20 international students. After the Conference, scholars have pledged to facilitate an interfaith event, such as a DIYS, on their campuses. This allows scholarship recipients to apply the lessons learned and networks developed over the three-day conference toward interfaith efforts in their home communities.
To register for this year’s gathering: Leadership in a Religiously Diverse World, click here.
Internship Opportunities
IFYC’s summer internship program provides young people with three months of interfaith trainings and mentorship as well as valuable experience working at a cutting-edge non-profit. Our interns work with staff to tackle our more important and formidable projects. When the summer ends and the interns return to their campuses, they have concrete action plans designed to create sustainable interfaith programs in their communities.
Days of Interfaith Youth Service (DIYS)
Days of Interfaith Youth Service is a campaign of events that pair community service and interfaith dialogue. Each year, the Days of Interfaith Youth Service Campaign brings together thousands of religiously diverse young people to serve their communities and build understanding and cooperation. We partner with various service providers around the globe to combat hunger, homelessness, and other challenges facing our world.
Outreach Education and Training
One of the best ways to build religious pluralism is to bring speakers and trainers from the Interfaith Youth Core to your campus or community. IFYC’s religiously diverse, dynamic training team works with college and universities, faith communities, public and private schools, and civic organizations. Last year, we reached over 26,000 people through public talks and skills-based trainings that empower young people and their allies to take action.
College and University Work
Colleges and universities have long been at the heart of movements for social change. From civil rights to environmentalism, students have shown their ability to unite, spread the message, and take action. Institutions of higher education are also at the forefront of interfaith activism. Through talks with university leaders and interfaith training of key stakeholders on each campus, we are transforming colleges across the country into hubs of interfaith cooperation.
International Youth Conference
The Conference on Interfaith Youth Work serves as the gathering for the interfaith youth movement. IFYC gathers over 500 interfaith student activists, academics, religious leaders, foundation representatives, policy analysts, and media professionals to explore new trends in the interfaith field, share best practices for interfaith leadership, develop the narrative of the interfaith movement, form inspiring partnerships, and build bridges that span cities, countries and religious traditions.
Religious Pluralism 101 Training and Speaking Tours
IFYC has worked with US Embassies around the world to provide trainings and intensive interfaith leadership experiences to young people, targeting those in marginalized religious communities. IFYC has done this through speaking tours, pluralism trainings, mini-grants, and exchanges. In 2008, we were awarded a grant by the US Mission to the European Union to implement our programs in six countries in Western Europe. This year we are rolling out similar programs in India and Indonesia.
Catalyze Global Networks
In Western Europe, IFYC created a network of practitioners who share best practices and collaborate on programs that advance interfaith cooperation through service. Our mini-grant program catalyzed interfaith programs in Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands. In the UK, our programs sparked the “IFYC UK Exchange Program Alumni Network”, in which participants are collaborating on interfaith projects this summer and fall. These activities will draw new constituencies into interfaith activities to create networks of positive engagement. In India, we are working directly with youth oriented civic NGOs to incorporate interfaith service training into their programs.
International Delegations
IFYC regularly hosts international delegations in its Chicago office, where IFYC staff facilitate conversations with visitors about the importance of developing young leaders equipped to promote positive relationships across diverse faiths.
Our Movement. Our Stories.
Too often, religion is seen as a barrier of division. IFYC believes faith can be a bridge of cooperation, strengthening our civil society and promoting the common good for all. Just as civil rights leaders and environmentalists built transformative movements in the 20th century, IFYC believes that interfaith leaders will build the movement for interfaith cooperation in the 21st century.
We invite you to read a few stories of our inspiring young interfaith leaders below and become a supporter today!
My name is Erum. This is my story.
I was sitting in a crowd of students at DePaul University. We were listening to Dr. Eboo Patel, the founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Youth Core, as he explained our duty to work together to better the world. I had heard of interfaith work before but had never really gotten involved. Hearing Eboo speak as a young American-Muslim felt so empowering. I knew from that moment that I needed to get more involved in this movement of the young, religious, and socially conscious. Read More.
My name is Kyohei. This is my story.
I grew up in Japan, knowing only my own Buddhist tradition and my own Japanese culture. It was hard to picture a world outside of the temples and the streets of Tokyo. In 2006, I participated in the World Council for Religion and Peace. It was an eye-opening moment for me. For the first time I met people of different faiths and realized how important it is for us to work together. I knew that I needed to be a part of the interfaith movement. Read More.
My name is Hannah. This is my story.
I’m a converted Christian who grew up in an agnostic family with many religiously diverse friends. My family and my faith instilled in me a deep commitment to social justice as well as a respect for other traditions. I joined IFYC because they taught me how to use my passion for interfaith work to become a leader on my university campus. Read More.
Step 1: Gain the Right Skills My name is Jason. This is my story.
Running an interfaith event takes a lot of work and a lot of skill. When my friend Sayria and I wanted to hold three city-wide student events, we needed skills like event planning, marketing, dialogue facilitation, and networking. We knew we could turn to IFYC to learn these skills to ensure that our events were successful.
IFYC gave us online resources, workshops, special trainings and leadership development programs that helped us reach our goals. By using IFYC’s methodology and attending its workshops, we were able to create a great program and get the right people in the room. As Sayira told you in her April e-mail, our events were incredibly successful and reinforced our commitment to the movement.
Here are some of the online resources IFYC offers on its Bridge-builders’ Network.
Click below to watch the video I made to help get the word out about interfaith work.
Invest in young people gaining the right skills to become leaders. Invest in IFYC.
Step 2: Connecting with the Right People My name is Hafsa. This is my story.
The first moment I really felt like I was part of a bigger movement was in a late October day in 2007. I was sitting at a table with other young people from all over the country representing different schools and diverse religious traditions. All around us the feeling of excitement was palpable. Young people sat next to interfaith luminaries discussing their on-the-ground work, planning events making connections. I was one of 500 students, interfaith leaders and experts that had traveled to Chicago for IFYC's 5th International Conference on Interfaith Youth Work.
I joined IFYC's Fellows Alliance in my senior year of college to experience moments like this one. Sometimes as an interfaith leader, you feel like you are the only one working to fix a system that's broken beyond your ability to repair it. By connecting to others in the movement, you're able to realize that your work isn't just about what you are doing in your community. It is also about building a tidal wave of action that will topple the dominant paradigm of "inevitable conflict of civilizations."
IFYC stands at the core of the interfaith youth movement, and one of its most valuable tools is its ability to help young people like me reach out to others and forge connections. By attending the IFYC conference in 2007, I connected with individuals in the academic and policy worlds who are concerned about interfaith interaction like Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, the chair and scholar-in-residence of the Nawawi Foundation, and Shamil Idriss, the Acting Director of the Secretariat for the UN Alliance of Civilizations. Those connections will give me a leg up when I start my career in policy work.
I also was able to connect with other students like Frankie Fredericks, a Christian IFYC Fellow from New York University, and Joshua Stanton, a Jewish IFYC Fellow from Amherst College. I was able to take many of their insights back to my campus to make my interfaith events better.
Through these successes and through my IFYC training, I learned the value of creating a strong network. During my year as an IFYC Fellow, I focused on fostering better ties with the Muslim and Jewish communities on my campus as well as increasing communication between the administration and students at Georgetown University.
I've since graduated from college and have spent the last year working with young people who are in the same position I was when I first started doing interfaith work on campus. I know that the greatest lesson I can teach them is that they are part of a larger movement; a groundswell of action and that hand-in-hand, we will create change.
The same can be said of philanthropy, and I'll prove it. $1,000 in gifts will allow us to select one student to receive a scholarship to IFYC's 6th International Conference. These students will be selected based on two criteria: financial need and their demonstrated ability to create on the ground change as an interfaith leader.
As a direct result of your gifts, these young people will have the benefit of connecting with interfaith leaders from across the country, while attending three days of workshops, strategy sessions and dialogues. Simply stated, your gift transforms the lives of young people.
All it takes is your $25, $50 or $100 gift. Please make your contribution today.
Step 3: Mentoring My name is Erum. This is my story.
"The greatest problem facing the 21st century is the problem of the faith divide. The faith divide does not separate Muslim from Christian, Gentile from Jew or Believer from Nonbeliever. The faith divide separates people who want to live together as brothers from people who want to perish together as fools. In moments like these, you have to cross the divide, make your voice heard, make your actions count and take a stand."
- Eboo Patel
I was sitting in a crowd of students at DePaul University. We were listening to Dr. Eboo Patel, the founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Youth Core, as he explained our duty to work together to better the world. I had heard of interfaith work before but had never really gotten involved. Hearing Eboo speak as a young American-Muslim felt so empowering. I knew from that moment that I needed to get more involved in this movement of the young, religious, and socially conscious.
Today I am one of twenty students in this year's Fellows Alliance program which provides me with training, networking and mentoring to engage in interfaith work on my campus and with community organizations.
IFYC staff are always there to provide mentorship to young people like me. IFYC helped me see the possibilities for relationship-building and interfaith learning in new and creative ways. With IFYC's help, I planned a series of cultural events called Café Finjan. We brought together Jewish and Muslim civic groups as well as the DePaul student community to celebrate faith and culture, share a variety of visual, musical, and artistic expressions, and establish meaningful relationships.
We need the philanthropic support of individuals like you in order to continue to work. Any size gift supports the training, networking, and mentoring IFYC provides to young people like myself each year.
Past support from donors like you helped transform Eboo's words about the faith divide into my story of tangible interfaith action. All it takes to support others like me is your $25, $50 or $100 gift. Please make your contribution today.
My name is Samantha. This is my story.
Do you ever wonder if one person can really change the world?
Can a small $20 donation to the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) bring about change in any concrete way?
Many people worry that their small contributions don't count for much in the end, but my friends in the interfaith youth movement know better. Since many of us are college students or recent graduates, we understand that giving thousands of dollars to our favorite cause is not going to happen anytime soon. What we do understand though is that small donations add up to big change. It's a little something called critical mass.
Let's say that I give up one day of going to the coffee shop on my way to class. The $20 I save doesn't seem like a lot, but if my whole class does the same, that $20 becomes $2,000. If we donate that money to IFYC, we would have enough to send two young leaders to IFYC's sixth conference, Leadership for a Religiously Diverse World this October. There they will learn the skills, best practices and techniques for creating sustained interfaith action that they will then bring back to their communities. Now that's critical mass.
This winter small donations like ours raised nearly $40,000 toward IFYC programs. Everyone who contributed made an impact on the number of young leaders IFYC was able to teach, train, nurture and network.
Now it's your turn to become part of a movement of donors. Give up one coffee, one movie or one night out and teach the world that interfaith cooperation can replace religious violence and that young leaders are the key to making it happen.
How does that $20 donation look now? To me, it looks like change.
Give a gift of $20 or more to IFYC and help us change the world.
My name is Sayira. This is my story. I first met Jason when he was looking for help with his project to bring student leaders from different Universities together to engage in interfaith action. I had just joined IFYC's Bridge-builders' Network and was looking for ways to get more involved. IFYC's staff saw that I had the skill-set that Jason's project needed.
At our first meeting, I was amazed at how much Jason and I had in common. I’m a Muslim and Jason is a Jew and, together, we were able to bridge our different communities. It was then that I realized the power of IFYC’s message of cooperation.
Together we were able to plan three large intercollegiate, interfaith events to kick off our project. By reaching out to students, campus leaders and faith community members, we created a network of people in our city dedicated to interfaith action.
IFYC was there every step of the way. They taught us the skills that we needed to bring our different networks together. Their workshops served as a blueprint for how we ran our events. Whenever we felt overwhelmed or there was a problem, we could always count on someone from IFYC to lend a hand. Their mentorship gave us confidence to try new ideas and become social entrepreneurs.
My work with IFYC and Jason has only just begun. My goal is to transform our community into a model of interfaith cooperation where young people of all faiths can engage in common action for the common good. I know that IFYC will help me realize this dream.
IFYC depends on generous gifts from donors like you to run their programs. This spring we need to raise $20,000 to cover the cost of the programs that help young people like me become interfaith leaders. I'm counting on your help to reach that amount. Please give a gift of $50, $75 or $100 to help us reach our goal!
My name is Hannah. This is my story.
I’m a converted Christian who grew up in an agnostic family with many religiously diverse friends. My family and my faith instilled in me a deep commitment to social justice as well as a respect for other traditions. I joined IFYC because they taught me how to use my passion for interfaith work to become a leader on my university campus.
My university is a great place. We are a very diverse campus, but we hardly talk about our religious differences. Last year, I was awarded a one-year fellowship through the IFYC’s Fellows Alliance and it became my mission to do something about that. My campus needed to understand its own diversity, and the students needed a way to talk about their religious and philosophical identities.
With IFYC’s help, I designed and conducted Religion 101 courses based on their training models. These classes discussed the world’s major religions and brought religious leaders, students and neighborhood partners together to discuss the shared values among our traditions.
My workshops helped my campus to see why interfaith cooperation was so important. I was then able to introduce interfaith dialogue into my university’s quarterly community service days. One event saw over 100 people come together to feed the hungry and discuss how our religious traditions inspired us to seek a better world.
Work like this happens every day in the interfaith youth movement. Behind my success stands IFYC mentors, resources, trainings and donors like you. Please give a gift of $25, $50 or $100 to IFYC’s young leaders. It’s a small price to pay for a future of interfaith cooperation!
My name is Nick. This is my story.
As an Evangelical Christian, I believe that interfaith cooperation is an important part of my faith. I’ve been involved with Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) for the past five years and over that time, I’ve seen how individuals like you help IFYC to mentor and train young interfaith leaders through an annual investment of $25, $50 or $100. It’s a small amount that can make a large difference in the lives of inspiring young people in today’s religiously diverse world.
Watch the video I made about my story and donate to IFYC. Gifts like yours empower me and my peers to work towards a world of interfaith cooperation.
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Thank you for your support.
My name is Kyohei. This is my story.
I grew up in Japan, knowing only my own Buddhist tradition and my own Japanese culture. It was hard to picture a world outside of the temples and the streets of Tokyo.
In 2006, I participated in the World Council for Religion and Peace. It was an eye-opening moment for me. For the first time I met people of different faiths and realized how important it is that we work together. I knew that I needed to be a part of the interfaith movement.
So, I moved to the United States and learned English to study interfaith cooperation as a seminary student. But, I wanted to do more than study interfaith cooperation. I wanted to be a part of the real work involved, so I turned to Interfaith Youth Core.
IFYC gave me the resources, skills and support I needed to transform my interest into action. This May, I am running a Day of Interfaith Youth Service focused on the environment. This will connect students of different faith traditions from 5 seminaries and colleges in my community. We will work with 40 high school students from low-income neighborhoods to teach them about why it is critical to protect our environment and how they and their faith communities can help.
This is only the beginning for me. When I am done with my studies I will return home and, with the help of IFYC, create an interfaith movement in Japan.
Please continue to support IFYC’s work toward making interfaith cooperation a global reality.
What is a Day of Interfaith Youth Service?
The Days of Interfaith Youth Service (DIYS) is a campaign of events that pair community service and interfaith dialogue. Each year, the Days of Interfaith Youth Service Campaign brings together thousands of religiously diverse young people around the world to serve their communities and build understanding and cooperation. Many partner with various service providers around the globe to combat hunger, homelessness, and other challenges facing our world.
If you are interested in participating or hosting a DIYS event join our Bridge-builders’ Network.
Fellow’s Alliance
Days of Interfaith Youth Service (DIYS)
Outreach Education and Training
Religious Pluralism 101 Training and Speaking Tours
