URI North America celebrated the 25th year of the North American Interfaith Network (NAIN) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
On August 11-14, URI North America’s Leadership Council joined NAIN to celebrate its 25th year of NAIN Connect. As a gift to honor NAIN Connect’s silver anniversary, URI North America granted NAIN $2,000. This year’s NAIN Connect theme was “Diversity is our Strength,” focusing the plenaries and workshops around best practices concerning religious, racial, and cultural diversity, as well as diversity in physical and mental abilities, thus offering the participants the opportunity to fully realize there is social and spiritual equity within and among all faiths.
The four days of learning and peace building included an exciting roster of 24 workshops, plenary keynotes, faith and cultural visits, as well as time for multi-faith devotional activities and prayer. The plenaries addressed diversity issues and building communities and highlighted the indigenous experience. There was also a plenary that provided young scholars with the occasion to participate in a Q & A session.
The workshops varied in subjects, including: the Golden Rule, Reflections on Pluralism, A Christian’s encounter with Islam, Querying Religion, Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine, Missing Link in Interfaith, and Values as a Bridge between Religion and Humanism, among many others. URI North America’s Leadership Council members, Gard Jameson, Sande Hart, Rebecca Tobias, and Sukhvinder Vinning, presented a workshop on “Strengths of Diverse Networking.” Leadership Council members, Sande Hart, chair of the Leadership Council, and Rebecca Tobias, who is also a Global Council Trustee of the URI, lead the workshop on “Compassionate Community Building.” Sarah Talcott Blair, another Leadership Council member, and Krithika Harish, URI’s Bay Area Young Leaders Program Coordinator, were panelist for the best practices youth engagement workshop.
In addition to the plenaries and workshops, NAIN Connect allowed URI North America’s staff and Leadership Council to reconnect with fellow Cooperation Circles and affiliates, and to build new relationships with likeminded organizations.
“It was so evident during this year’s NAIN Connect that personal relationships are essential to all of our work,” said Sande Hart. “The gift in personal relationships, where we can touch one another, elevates our understanding of who we each are as individuals so we can work closer and be more effective as a team.”
NAIN Connect 2013 had among the highest number of youth participants than any previous year, encouraging intergenerational discourse and friendships between young North American interfaith organizations and networks. For four days, Toronto felt like the heart—and future—of the interfaith movement.
