Inspired to Serve in Action

Though interfaith service-learning has programmatic components, it is, at its heart, a vision—a vision of young people working together across faith lines for the common good, growing and learning together. This vision is most likely to take root in your community if you and other leaders in your community become passionate about it and invite others to share and shape the vision.

Share Your Vision with Potential Allies

• Familiarize yourself with the basic concepts of service-learning, interfaith engagement, and asset building, if you haven't done so already. Talk with a few friends about them so that you can begin to make the language and concepts your own.
• Begin informal conversations with like-minded youth and adults. Share your own vision and hopes; listen to theirs. Discover others they know who might share the vision. As you do this, be intentional about reaching across different generations, faith traditions, and cultures to find these allies.
• Gather more information as questions arise. Talk to others who have been involved in interfaith service-learning. Share some of the videos in this tool kit. Access other tools and resources, if needed.
• As you find more people who have compatible dreams, bring them together for informal visioning and networking, focusing on areas of shared priorities. Begin to identify possibilities for what you might do together.

Broaden the Conversation and Vision

• Offer to share your thoughts (and those of your allies) with community and faith-based groups that may be interested. Download and customize this PowerPoint presentation about youth-led, interfaith service learning for your use.
• Host a meeting of youth and adult leaders who express interest. Find out what interests them and what priorities emerge from the dialogue. Continue the process of identifying others who should be invited to participate.
• Begin planning meetings with these key allies. Determine what processes—formal or informal—to use to build more of a shared vision across various stakeholder groups in your community, including youth and parents, leaders of religious organizations, community organization leaders, and others.

Determine Your Next Steps

Depending on your communty's history and capacity, you can proceed in several directions:

• Form an ongoing leadership team of youth and adult allies to plan future work.
• Use a temporary task force to launch a one-day interfaith service-learning event, waiting to formalize an ongoing leadership team until people have a taste of interfaith service-learning.
• Invite youth, religious institutions, and community partners to get involved in an ongoing interfaith service-learning program or collaboration.
• Integrate the vision of interfaith service-learning into an existing structure or program, then focus on helping to enrich and deepen those efforts.

Resources for Shaping Your Vision

• Acts of Faith, by Eboo Patel, is a personal memoir by the founder of Interfaith Youth Core. It offers the compelling history and vision of interfaith youth service-learning. A discussion guide for the book is available for use with your vision-shaping team.
• Vision: Awakening Your Potential to Create a Better World, by Peter L. Benson, president of Search Institute, highlights the importance of vision and vision bearers through stories and inspirational quotes.
• Creating a Shared Vision, a step-by-step facilitator's guide for a 3-4 hour vision-creating workshop, from the C.O.O.L./Idealist Civic Engagement Curriculum.
• More tools and resources