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

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

  We will hear answers from five tried and tested leaders from different traditions and then open to conversation up to everyone.

  Rita Semel, Heng Sure, Michael Pappas, Ellen Grace O’Brian, and Tarunjit Singh Butalia

• 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

• 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 three constituencies – veterans returning from war, hospital patients, and the incarcerated. Respectively, our presenters come from Buddhist, Christian, and Neo-Pagan traditions. Each has been a pioneering innovator 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, and Patrick McCullum

• 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

• 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 three Bay Area interfaith groups – the Interfaith Networks Group, Marin Interfaith Council, and Peninsula Clergy Network – who are developing ways to respond to political realities without alienating constituents.

  Bud Heckman, Carol Hovis, and Jay Miller

• Interfaith Personal Relationships: Gifts, Challenges and Blessings
  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

• 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

• Using Appreciative Inquiry & Digital Stortytelling as Tools for Building Interfaith Collaboration
  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