A gathering of Hidden Seeds: Global Indigenous Network Cooperation Circle
Please join us in welcoming new Cooperation Circles to the URI family! This month brings us five new groups of interfaith leaders striving for peace and intercultural understanding. We look forward to working together and creating a better world.
Shalom Ghana (Ghana)
Shalom Ghana is a Ghana-based registered national nonprofit based in Accra, the Capital City of Ghana in West Africa. The Organization works in promoting education, peace education, and conflict prevention workshops, seminars and conferences, capacity building, and social development. The organization currently has a total of eight (8) active members and several volunteers.
In the last two years Shalom Ghana, together with many of its partners in Ghana, has organized community peace awareness gatherings, as well as interreligious crusades with the participation of religiously and culturally diverse people, including leaders, youths, and most people of diverse religions attending when invited.
Paz Mozambique (Mozambique)
Mozambique is more than 20 or 30 tribes. In each tribe there are certain beliefs and faiths. Paz Mozambique CC believes interfaith cooperation will help the community to deal with almost every kind of belief in the tribes. They created a platform where they will have the opportunity to discuss and express opinions and find that one thing that can make them walk together to build the country together. If it was only one faith we would not be able to embrace each other and walk together. This CC was created to help Mozambicans recognize, accept, and celebrate their diversity and contributions to building peace in Mozambican society. As members of URI they plan to offer capacity building for peace within existing institutions including: highlighting role models, emphasis on adapting to local context, case studies, and access to information.
Blossom (India - South Zone)
This is the first Cooperation Circle in the hill stations of Nilgiri, where there is a large tribal population. Blossom CC works mainly among the Adivasi (aborigine) groups who are marginalized and relegated to the bottom section of the society. They derive inspiration from their spirituality. Environmental protection is also one of the concerns of this group of active social workers, who have a lot of experience in social uplifting projects and Adivasi welfare activities. They envisage a series of programs like interfaith seminars, peace building institutes, leadership training programs, community development projects etc. to build daily interfaith cooperation among different communities in Nilgiri. They hope to build bridges among Hindus, Christians, Muslims, and the tribal communities.
Hidden Seeds: Global Indigenous Network
Members of this CC have found that indigenous wisdom is often left out of consideration for several reasons, so they understood that a group that could bring indigenous voices to the interfaith table was needed. Indigenous people from around the world met in San Francisco in June 2014, and just being able to come together and meet with one another was a great stride forward in creating the network that they hope to achieve. They hope to create regular meetings where CC members can discuss significant indigenous issues and mobilize a global response, weaving together circles within circles.
During the last meeting of Hidden Seeds: Global Indigenous Network CC, they had folks from Russia, Canada, Australia, Africa, South & North America and more across all eight URI regions. They discussed issues such as usurpation of native water, land and sacred sites. They discovered that they share so much in common that they came out of the meeting feeling truly united in cause around the world.
The GIFTED Mission (California, The United States)
Opened in 2014 in the San Francisco Bay Area, the hope of CC Members is to address the realities of interreligious dialogue on a truly global scale by inviting religious leaders from all over the world to share their stories.
GIFTED itself stands for Global Inter Faith Tolerance and Education Development. It’s an acronym that represents the heart of our organization’s purpose. CC values are centered about a freedom of expression for all the members of the world’s many faiths.
At the GIFTED Mission, speakers will have a chance to stand before a body of their peers and share the essence of what they believe as religious practitioners. This opportunity to share encompasses every aspect of religious experience, whether it is about efforts in a local church, a continued personal involvement with a religious charity, service as a missionary in a foreign land, or experience with conversion and changes of faith. It is the purpose of the GIFTED mission to be available to all these experiences and more as they explore the domain of religious traditions with the help of their members.
