NAIN 2009 Conference in Kansas City
IFA Executive Director Janet Penn and four teens from the Youth Leadership Program had the opportunity in June 2009 to attend and lead workshops at the North American Interfaith Conference (NAIN) in Kansas City, MO. They returned pretty energized by the experience. The teens also made quite impression upon the attendees. Enjoy these excerpts from three of the four teens as well as one from an adult participant who attended their workshops. We are proud of the very favorbal buzz IFA’s leaders generated.
Teen Reflection on NAIN 2009 Conference Experience
Aanchal
On June 25th 2009, a day after summer began, I, along with three other Sharon Interfaith Action youth (Sophie, Sarah, and Henal) boarded a plane to make our way to Kansas City, Missouri. We were heading to this Midwestern city to attend and speak at the NAIN (North American Interfaith Network) conference of 2009. We were asked to speak at this conference on the subject of the youth interfaith movement, and our specific role in the movement.
Knowing that youth Interfaith work was a pillar of the NAIN conference, we assumed that there would be many youth there to share our practices with, and also to learn from. However, upon our arrival, we realized that we were the only youth there! The NAIN organization, along with many other Interfaith initiatives, considers youth to be 18 to 35 year olds, while we, as Interfaith Action, have a very different definition of youth-high school students. Thus, we were the only high school students present at a conference where a major point of discussion was the role of youth in the interfaith movement!
At first, we felt it an affront to be excluded in the youth category. However, in the spirit of Interfaith, we decided to use this opportunity to educate others.
We held our youth session with a great attendance, and all worked together as a team, introducing ourselves and our program, leading the group through various dialoguing activities, and ultimately ending with an informative Q&A session. Our session ended with much praise, and we felt so great to be appreciated for what we were doing. The people in our group realized that youth encompasses not only the college-students, but also the college-bound. Many of them came up to us, and told us that our session was amazing. But to me, the amazing part of the conference was after our session.
After the session, participants were so eager to learn from us-about what we were doing as youth, and about what is actually possible through this youth movement. The NAIN delegates (many who didn’t even attend our workshop!!) wanted to know everything about our youth program, especially ways to implement the initiative in their own communities.
I am so glad that we were able to expand the vision of youth for our new found friends at NAIN, but I am extremely grateful for what they gave to me, as well as Interfaith Action too. Henal, Sophie, Sarah and I made many connections with people from all over America. We plan to strengthen these connections and hope to have many of these friends come to our conference, T.I.D.E. 2010. We arrived back in Boston, sunburnt, exhausted, but above all, excited to begin a new chapter of Interfaith work, a chapter that includes all of our new colleagues and friends.
Henal
I am speechless. I am shocked by the overwhelming positive response we got from all of these people. I realized that the conference would only help to foster even stronger connections with the people of NAIN. I feel like we became little celebrities, everyone was talking about our youth program.
We had a good number of people come to our conference, and they were so excited to be a part of it. They loved how professional we were, and how seriously we took our ‘job’. I am so excited to go back to Sharon because we have so many new contacts.
We have youth initiatives interested in us from New York, California, Kansas, Missouri, and many other places. I am so excited that the TIDE conference might become national. I love the idea of getting a bus beginning in Wichita and then having youth be picked up along the way to Boston. I am unbelievably excited for this!
I am also very anxious because I hope that our motivation will not peter out. I also think that the conversations we had about our own youth organization made something very clear to me. It is great that we are becoming national and international, and might have IFA satellites around America.
Sophie
I realized that am a good person and doing this good work reminded me of the person who I truly am - in my purest form. Not the person that my test grades or awards or clothes make me or perceive me “to be”.
This weekend I decided that I’m truly considering pursuing education. Education grounded in the context of Interfaith ideals that is. I envision actual youth empowerment, in a classroom; IFYLP youth empowerment - equipping first graders with such dialoguing tools. Having an entire school and an entire curriculum with the ideology to give kids room to grow as global citizens, just like IFYLP does.
I have always had/felt this need to be part of something larger than myself. For the first time in my life I feel like I am. (And I realize how lucky I am, being only 17). I realize that my crazy ideas and dreams and visions have finally found a place and an audience to be not only appreciated and heard (thoroughly) but to be made possible.
I think that is a pretty big, pretty cool, and pretty obtainable dream. What we’re doing is radical. We are the future. I understand that it is my job to continue the idea of empowering subsequent generations to in turn empower those around me and subsequent generations after.
Our work continues to actively “answer” the question posed to all generations, “and who will be responsible for ‘fixing’ out world?” Well, I believe that we all are, and through this work, progress can actually be made to make our world a better, more understanding, and wise place to experience.
NAIN Review by attendee Sarah Talcott Blair, URI Director of Youth Programs
Highlights to me from the conference included in particular meeting the incredible young women of Sharon Interfaith Action and the founder of this groundbreaking program, Janet Penn. I attended a workshop designed and led by the four young women, all 16 and 17 years old, and their energy and enthusiasm for interfaith dialogue and interfaith-based action was infectious. I was impressed by the maturity in which they carried themselves, the wisdom behind the questions they proposed for our group sharing (“when was a time in your life where your values came into conflict with someone you care about? How did you respond?”) and the care with which they facilitated each activity. It was also eye-opening for all of us “olders” in the room to discover that they had come up with all of the activities and material on their own, and it wasn’t written down anywhere; they had brainstormed it together and designed it purposefully for this conference. I found the freshness and originality of the activities very inspiring, and also their commitment to being a truly youth-led program. They told us that in Sharon Interfaith Action, once one of their youth leaders turns the age of 18, they can no longer have a vote in the decision-making for the organization. Another powerful moment was when us “olders” realized, with some sadness, that many of us lacked having a mentor when we were growing up in contrast to these young women, and, for some of us, our life work had grown out of that ache in us to be the mentor for others that we never had. My hat is off to Janet for her brilliant, courageous work, and to these young pioneers for their inspiring example! They truly are the future of the interfaith movement…