PEACEBUILDING
“Let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.”
— from “Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam” by Martin Luther King, Jr.
AMENDS GLOBAL FELLOWS
The AMENDS Global Fellows are a network of young leaders from the Middle East, North Africa, and United States working to build a more equitable, sustainable, and prosperous world.
AMENDS began in 2011, when Arab youth led a wave of popular protests across the MENA region. Two Stanford University students, Khalid Shawi from Bahrain and Elliot Stoller from Chicago, imagined a platform for MENA and US youth to gather, build their skills, and share their changemaking stories.
Since the first AMENDS Summit in California, the Fellows have hosted peacemaking trainings on three continents. Equipping Young Peacemakers is an open-access online resource library produced by the Fellows in partnership with Shughel Shabab.
learn more →
INTERFAITH AMERICA
Contradicting ideologies are often cited as a cause of conflict. But a difference in faith-based practices doesn’t necessary mean a fundamental incompatibility in faith-based values.
Interfaith America works to engage religious diversity in the US as a bridge of cooperation that can support social equity and collective wellbeing, rather than as a barrier of division that inevitably leads to hatred and mistrust.
In its early days, Interfaith America was known as the Interfaith Youth Core, and focused its work on training student leaders to foster interreligious dialogue and action on Midwest college campuses. Today, Interfaith America works across the country in a wide range of sectors and spaces to support research, policy, training, and activism.
learn more →
JERUSALEM YOUTH CHORUS
The Jerusalem Youth Chorus is a choral and dialogue program for Palestinian and Israeli youth, training young musicians to become community peacemakers.
Through collaborative song-writing and story-sharing, JYC empowers its participants to build individual and collective understanding. With much of rehearsal time spent in professionally facilitated dialogue, the choir’s model goes beyond simply singing together into an intentional care and appreciation for each other’s identities, life experiences, and cultural histories.
As the choir creates a home for all its members, they seek to show what a world built on shared belonging could be – and use their songs and stories as a catalyst to bring that future about.