Illinois Interfaith and Community Service Challenge

Schedule

Registration is free for Champaign-Urbana/University of Illinois students, staff, faculty, and community members. All keynote talks are free and open to the public. Register today at https://my.engr.illinois.edu/icic13

Friday, April 5th

When?	What?	Who?	Where?
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM	Friday Forum on Faith and Action	Open to the Public	University YMCA
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM	Pre-Conference: Interfaith Literacy for Campus Professionals	Registered Participants	University YMCA
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM	Conference Registration	Registered Participants	Spurlock Museum Knight Auditorium
6:00 PM – 6:30 PM	Conference Welcome	Open to the public*	Spurlock Museum Knight Auditorium
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM	Keynote I: Eboo Patel	Open to the public*	Spurlock Museum Knight Auditorium
8:00 PM – 9:00 PM	Book Signing & Dessert Reception	Open to the public*	Spurlock Museum Knight Auditorium

Saturday, April 6th

8:00 AM – 9:00 AM	Breakfast & Late Registration	Registered Participants $	Wohlers Hall Room 141
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM	Workshops I	Registered Participants	See conference bulletin
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM	Workshops II	Registered Participants	See conference bulletin
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM	Workshops III	Registered Participants	See conference bulletin
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM	Lunch	Registered Participants $	See conference bulletin
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM	Meal Packaging Service Project	Registered Participants	Wesley Methodist Church Great Hall
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM	Facilitating Interfaith Reflections	Registered Participants	See conference bulletin
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM	Faith Leader Panel on Interfaith Engagement	Registered Participants	Wohlers Hall Room 141
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM	Keynote II: Joanna Brooks	Open to the public*	Wohlers Hall Room 141
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM	Affinity Dinner	Registered Participants $	TBD
8:00 PM	Social Activities		Champaign-Urbana

Sunday, April 7th

8:00 AM – 9:00 AM	Breakfast	Registered Participants $	Wohlers Hall Room 141
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM	Workshops IV	Registered Participants	See conference bulletin
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM	Workshops V	Registered Participants	See conference bulletin
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM	Keynote III: Usra Ghazi and Alana Kinarsky & Closing	Open to the public*	Wohlers Hall Room 141
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM	Lunch	Registered Participants $	TBD
1:00 PM	Hit the road or enjoy C-U on your own!

* There is a $5 suggested donation for the opening session and Eboo Patel’s keynote  for attendees not registered as participants in the full conference

$ Meals require registration and payment to attend.

Pre-Conference

Pre-Conference Session: 1:30-4:30PM, Friday, April 5th
Interfaith Literacy for Campus Professionals
Have you ever wondered how to engage in conversation with college students about religious diversity? As college professionals, is it our role to talk about faith and philosophical identities with college students? Featuring nationally recognized Student Affairs leaders Dr. Manuel Gomez (UC Irvine) and Dr. Mamta Accapadi (Oregon State University), participants will learn frameworks to incorporate interfaith dialogue and engagement into their work, while also gaining some concrete resources to make that happen on your campus.

Workshops

 Session I: 9:00-9:50AM, Saturday, April 6th
Creating Space for Interfaith Relationships: Non Verbal Considerations
Rob Kirby, Wesley Methodist Church
How can you create an environment where persons of all (or no) faiths, can feel welcome? Often interfaith relationships become stymied by environments that are not conducive to expressions of faith. This seminar will focus on all forms of non verbal communications, exploring multiple issues that need to be addressed before the first words slip from your mouths. Well look at aspects including scheduling, location, religious symbols, seating, food, drinks and expressions of welcome. These insights spring from a decade of leadership at the International Coffeehouse.

Interfaith and Intergenerational Classroom: Building a Strong Interfaith Dialogue
Wanda Scott, Cuyahoga Community College/John Carroll University
This workshop will focus on pedagogical strategies to overcoming the challenges of creating effective interfaith dialogue within an academic environment. The techniques presented can be utilized in most academic settings where religious diversity is the topic and also when working with intergenerational groups. Specifically speaking, diversity in the classroom has many benefits to both the student and teacher. A diverse group of students fosters an engaging class discussion. However, there can be challenges to open dialogue especially if students have misconceived notions about academic discussion of religion, misconceptions of other religions and if there are generational gaps that create isolation within the classroom. Within this type of classroom dynamic, the goal of the instructor is to identify the experiences of all the students, anticipate potential barriers and employ effective collaborative learning techniques and engaging exercises to create a positive learning environment.

Interfaith and Interacting with the Media
Masood Haque, University of Illinois
This workshop is designed to assist interfaith organizers with basic skills for interacting with the media in regards to event organizing and awareness-raising. Participants will gain a range of skills, including how to write and generate a press release, as well as the key goals to have in mind when going into an interview with a news source.

 

Session II: 10:00-10:50AM, Saturday, April 6th

The Leadership of Smallness: Blessed Teresa of Calcuttas Transformative Tool for Social Justice
Mary Ilu Altman, Saint Elizabeth School of Nursing
Leaders are gifted with extraordinary talent to transform people’s lives and to influence individual’s ways of leading. Mother Teresa as a spiritual leader served the poorest of the poor in India and elsewhere she found violence and suffering. She advocates the leadership of smallness as a transformative tool for social justice, ordinary people doing great deeds with love for God and neighbor. The presentation examines Blessed Teresa leadership directives, its significance for higher education environments and ways to use her compassionate leadership in student affairs practices.

Introduction to Creating a Service Project
Vaneitta Goines, Office of Volunteer Programs, University of Illinois
Description TBA

Exploring spiritual wellness programming on a public campus a case study
Diane Davis & Clare Cady, Oregon State University
Spiritual wellness, on a public campus, is often left to non-university professionals and/or clergy. Current trends in Student Affairs are to create programs focused on student spiritual development, internal work, and engaging students in the asking of the big questions. One such program is Spiritual Wellness Week at Oregon State University, a collaboration of Student Affairs Professionals and local Interfaith Spiritual Advisors. This program examines SWW as a case study for: developing campus and non-campus partnerships; creating safe spaces for spiritual exploration for students; and lessons learned from a first foray into spiritual wellness programming.

 

Session III: 11:00-11:50AM, Saturday, April 6th

Creating Spaces for Intergroup Dialogue
Nick Millman, Nandita Venkatesan, Jayme Roberts, Jaclyn Schwartz, & Ari Wilson, ISR Social Justice League, University of Illinois
This interactive workshop will explore how basic communication and listening skills are crucial to developing a community that promotes equality and justice. This workshop will illustrate strategies on how to initiate, maintain and facilitate productive conversations about controversial social justice issues. Current University of Illinois undergraduate students, including members of the University Housing organization the Social Justice League as well as paraprofessional Multicultural Advocate staff, will facilitate a series of participatory activities to exercise introductory intergroup dialogue skills.

Reflect Better Together: Interfaith-Centered Service
Kristi Del Vecchio & Sarah Funkhouser, Concordia College
Within interfaith activism, there is a call to act upon common values for the common good; we often accomplish this through the vehicle of service. However, many interfaith leaders often struggle to include a faith-related reflection before, after, or during service events. However, reflection is a key part of realizing impact and identifying essential aspects of personal, group, and societal connection. In this session, we hope to provide a variety of passive and active reflection tools, for service groups of large and small sizes. The attendees will experience first-hand some of the interactive reflective games, and be taught other tools relevant to service reflection. Our goal is to make reflection an essential part of interfaith service; through intentional questions and activities that allow for interfaith dialogue, we plan to share how reflection can be easy, fun, and impactful.

Two Presidential Candidates and Local Mormons: A Dialogue in the Urbana-Champaign Area
Neil Davis, Lisa Diaz, Ricardo Diaz, Linda Larsen, & Ryan Larsen, Urbana Residents
The 2012 presidential race reignited the controversy over the religion of the candidates. The GOP candidate suffered from a contradiction: The base he appealed to didn’t like him much, in part because he is of a religion that some don’t consider Christian (enough?). Yet many of those religion’s values were actually as conservative, or more, than that base. Reporters were left to inform the public and their output was (not) necessarily a fair representation of LDS views. In the Urbana-Champaign area, a radio show was begun to motivate interfaith understanding by asking our own Mormon neighbors their views on what was happening in the national area. We invited listeners to “Ask a Mormon,” a weekly radio show. The presentation will examine the interviews, the topics, and the interfaith dialogue that person to person interaction can create.

 

Session IV: 9:00-9:50AM, Sunday, April 7th

What Can Social Justice and Interfaith Work Learn from Each Other?
Rachel Breck, Interfaith Youth Core & Ross Wantland, University of Illinois
How can interfaith leaders engage different types of diversity (i.e. race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation) in the movement? What can interfaith organizing learn from social justice education? In this
workshop, participants will discuss how intersecting social identities influence the dynamics of interfaith organizing. Participants will apply a critical lens to interfaith work in order to create a more inclusive and
representative environment for social change.

Building an Exciting and Effective Interfaith Alternative Spring Break Trip
Brad Seligmann, University of Michigan
This presentation and discussion will cover how alternative spring break trips can be utilized as useful structures for interfaith service learning programs. Building an effective interfaith alternative spring break program is challenging but rewarding, needing to maintain respectful partnerships with religious communities and populations being served. The presentation will discuss what ideal service projects would look like in terms of student leadership/partnerships, division of time between service and reflection, and how to avoid practices like disengaged hit-and-run service and disrespectful religion tourism. Examples of recent University of Michigan Interfaith ASB trips will be given, with time for questions and discussion.

Bag-It Better Together
Hannah Pynn & Clare Cady, Oregon State University
Bag-It Better is the 2013 interfaith initiative at OSU. Interfaith Community Service (IFCS) partners with the Human Services Resource Center (HSRC) Food Pantry to fight food insecurity in our community. Serving alongside one another, we prepare for public food pantry events that primarily make sure students have enough to eat each month. Our interfaith community has conversations on a lunch break and we focus on understanding why faith, service, and community engagement are important to each of us. Learning from each other, creating lasting relationships, and cooperating to eliminate poverty, we are cultivating a safe place at a public research institution to fully embrace the spiritual identities of our diverse community.

 

Session V: 10:00-10:50AM, Sunday, April 7th
Speedfaithing 101: How to Run a Speedfaithing Event
Masood Haque, University of Illinois and Kristi Del Vecchio, Concordia College
Description TBA

Tips & Tricks for a Successful Service Project (Advanced)

Vaneitta Goines, Office of Volunteer Programs
Description TBA

Bridging the Muslim and Jewish Divide
Usra Ghazi & Alana Kinarsky, Interfaith Youth Core
The interfaith movement is built upon the legacy of leaders like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and spiritual activists like the Pashtun leader Badshah Khan. Carrying the legacy of these Jewish and Muslim faith heroes, religiously diverse young people are increasingly bringing their campuses and communities together around interfaith cooperation. Presenters from IFYC will explore the challenges and successes with engagement between Jewish and Muslim students on campus. Participants will learn about relationship building and interfaith literacy as useful skills to navigate interreligious divisiveness.