The Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies (ICJS) has awarded four 2024 Interreligious Capacity-Building Grants for alumni of the ICJS Justice Leaders Fellowship to inspire, incentivize, and equip these nonprofit and community leaders to create a new interreligious initiative within their spheres of influence.
The grants are funded with the support of the T. Rowe Price Foundation,
The ICJS Capacity-Building Grants provide up to $2,200 to Justice Leaders Fellowship alumni who have an initiative that integrates their expanded understanding and interest in crossing religious barriers in service of the common good. These grants are intended to expand the capacity of participants to take the risk to initiate their idea.
The four awardees are:
- Gilchrist Center Hospice, Howard County, for the creation of an interfaith chapel that will provide an inclusive space that respects and accommodates various faiths, promoting a sense of comfort and support for patients and their families during challenging times.
- Jerusalem’s Daughters, a series of healing circles for women of faith, who are also leaders in their respective communities. These healing circles, which will include two groups of 10 women, will provide a safe, contained space for personal reflection, honoring differences, and re-imagining conflicts as an opportunity for change, self-healing, and growth.
- NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Metropolitan Baltimore’s Faith Conference, a one-day event that will bring together more than 100 leaders in our community to network and share how mental health shows up in their congregations, and how faith and spiritual leaders have an essential role in providing first-line support and care to people living with mental health conditions and their families.
- Repair the World’s Interfaith Shabbat and Earth Day Service Project. This Interfaith Shabbat, to be hosted in partnership with Beth Am Synagogue, the Word of Life Christian Community Church, and the Muslim Community Cultural Center, will gather as many as 75 participants to build community across religious difference and cultivate an inclusive environment that will foster relationships among the Jewish community and other faith communities across Baltimore.
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The Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies (ICJS) is an independent educational 501(c)3 nonprofit, without affiliation with any religious or academic institution, that straddles the academic arena and the public square by working to advance interreligious dialogue and understanding. In a culture that has privatized religion, ICJS maintains that engaging interreligiously in public is vital for a healthy democracy. Through educational programming, public-facing scholarship, and relationship-centered fellowships and workshops, ICJS models a new conversation in the public square that affirms religious diversity in the United States. For more information, visit icjs.org.