This post was originally written as a Letter to the Editor for The Oracle, our campus newspaper. While our Letter will unfortunately not appear in print, we’re really excited to share it here.
We all know the narratives by now.
“Different religions can never get along.”
“Organized religion is stupid or useless.”
“Faith only breeds hatred and mistrust in the world.”
But at Hamline, we know that’s not true. We know that our faiths and traditions can be better together, and we know that it all starts with a question: “What if?” What if people of all religious and philosophical backgrounds came together to do good work? What if Muslims and atheists, Christians and Hindus, Jews and Sikhs, all came together to share our stories and change the world? What if we all chipped in, learned to get along, and helped our communities together?
“What if?”
In November 2010, the Better Together campaign formed a partnership with Taking Root, a local interfaith free-case refugee resettlement program of the Minnesota Council of Churches. Between November and April, Hamline students worked with Taking Root staff to help settle new refugee families into new homes – and on the path toward better lives! We hosted monthly interfaith dialogue meals at which we shared food, hospitality, and conversation. We also completed monthly interfaith service days, collecting donations and volunteering for new families. By the time we ended our campaign with April’s Better Together Finale, we had collected a mountain of clothes, warm jackets, household items, and baby items, packed eight welcome kits for new apartments, contributed roughly $700 worth of donations, and served twelve to fifteen hours for our new neighbors.
Now, we are eager to share our continued plans for next year! We are folding this year’s Better Together campaign into an even stronger national campaign: President Obama’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge, spearheaded by Rola Alkatout.
We can’t wait to make Campus Challenge a strong improvement on the Better Together campaign, bringing the same ideas and intentions along with the plan. Our tentative service project goals include the idea of ‘home’ – working to provide new homes for new families, safe neighborhoods for children, and affordable, accessible housing. With next year’s Campus Challenge, there will be plenty of volunteer opportunities for students around campus to be involved, at several partnerships in the Twin Cities.
The idea that we can be a strong and loving community despite religious differences is something that is very important to us, and dedicating time to volunteer work is something that we believe can make a community much stronger and united. We are so eager to get a solid plan figured out and work together as a community at Hamline and beyond, learning and loving along the way! Watch out for our events next fall, and join us in proving that we can make the world a better place.
- Rola Alkatout (Social Justice ’12) and April Palo (Religion ’11)
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