National Days of Interfaith Youth Service, April 9-10, 2005

Greetings to all! United Religions Initiative is partnering again with the Interfaith Youth Core and other interfaith collaborators to organize the second annual National Days of Interfaith Youth Service, from April 9-10, 2005. In 2004, more than 1,000 religiously diverse young people took part in 30 service projects in 20 cities and 11 college campuses across the country. The goal of the project is to bring together religiously diverse young people in hometowns and academic campuses across the nation to serve their communities. These young people will explore and act upon the impulse of service in their religious traditions and work towards better inter-religious understanding.

In 2004, three URI nexuses took part –

• In Washington D.C. the URI Washington D.C. CC and Interfaith Conference for Metropolitan Washington and other partners organized an Interfaith Youth Build with Habitat for Humanity;
• In Seattle, the Interfaith Council of Washington put together an arts and cultural festival for youth with Dances for Universal Peace and Power of Hope;
• In San Francisco, URI collaborated with the United Youth Leadership Council and other faith partners to convene a two-day Interfaith Youth Action Retreat, with workshops on peacebuilding and diminishing cultural biases as well as a day of service at the Richmond EcoVillage.

URI-USA Cooperation Circles are warmly invited to participate in this project in 2005 by organizing a youth service project in your community – April 9-10, 2005. The theme for this coming year's service work is ending homelessness and hunger. National service partners for this year's project include:

• Interfaith Habitat (contact Erik Schwarz for more details about organizing an interfaith habitat project in your community – erikschwarz@verizon.net)
• America's Second Harvest (contact Maurice Weaver for more details about connecting with local food banks and shelters – mweaver@secondharvest.org / www.secondharvest.org)

If you or your Cooperation Circle would like to take part, please contact Sarah Talcott, URI Youth Programs Coordinator, for more information – sarah@uri.org.

Organizers will receive the following resources:

• The NDIYS Organizer's Toolkit, with information about organizing a local steering committee, locating service partners, religious sensitivity issues, sample press releases and much, much more;
• A copy of the training video, "Running an Effective National Days of Interfaith Youth Service Event;"
• Connection to other organizing partners, to exchange ideas and learn from each other.

The goals of this project are to:

• Nurture better relationships between faith communities by engaging religiously diverse young people and their faith communities to work for better understanding and cooperative service;
• Strengthen religious young people's connection to their own religious community by exploring teachings of service in their own faith tradition;
• Encourage religious young people to see a similar impulse of service in other traditions;
• Mobilize the idea of this possibility into the local and national culture.