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Joshua DuBois: Well, good morning, everyone.
Oh, come on, good morning.
(applause)
This is an exciting day to be at the White House, huh.
I want to thank all of you for coming from around the country
to participate in this convening for the President's Interfaith
and Community Service Campus Challenge,
the kick-off for the school year component of this challenge.
I'm so excited to have you here.
My name is Joshua DuBois and I'm special assistant to President
Obama and director of Office of Faith-based
and Neighborhood Partnerships.
We are working with a number of other offices
to coordinate this challenge.
And it's really my pleasure to welcome you on behalf of
President Obama.
In fact, I was able to be with the President briefly this
morning and let him know that we were going to come over here and
we were going to have a great day today.
And he asked me to do a little something and you all are going
to have to just bear with me.
I've been working for him for like ten years.
So, if he says I have to do something I have to do it.
If you wouldn't mind raising your hands, please.
Sorry. In the back there too, please.
(laughter)
Could you move them like this, please? Okay.
I promised President Obama I would shake everyone's hand at
the Interfaith Challenge this morning.
(laughter)
Sorry, folks.
I had to do my job.
So listen, I hope you sense the -- despite my joke -- the
gravity in this room this morning.
This is truly an historic occasion.
You all are a part of something special.
Never before in the history of our nation have colleges and
universities and seminaries and other theological schools,
community colleges, and others, come together around the goal of
interfaith cooperation through service around the nation.
You all are really a key part of forming the ties that bind
our country together and will stay bound in the years and
decades to come.
So this is really something special.
We have a tremendous day in store for you today.
You're going to hear from the folks that put this
challenge together.
You're going to hear from the President's top advisers,
including his top adviser on education, Roberto Rodriguez,
who will be here in just a moment.
You're going to hear from our nation's top national service
officials and also the President's domestic policy
adviser as well.
But more importantly, and this is one of the key things I want
to leave with you at the top of the day,
you're going to hear from each other.
Hopefully you're going to interact with folks from around
the country who are taking part of this -- in the same process
of building interfaith collaboration.
And I think you'll learn just as much,
if not more from one another than you will from the speakers
that you hear throughout the day.
So I hope you'll take that time to network and form
relationships and really connect and make this a movement as
opposed to just projects separately around the country.
So I'm going to tell you a bit more about our office,
about the day and about some other key components of this
convening in a bit, but first I want to introduce a very special
guest, and that is Roberto Rodriguez.
Roberto is President Obama's top adviser for education out of the
White House.
He's a special assistant to the President in the domestic
policy council.
Formerly worked as Senator Kennedy's point person for
education issues, and has really just been a tremendous leader in
moving our entire education reform agenda forward.
So let's welcome Roberto to the stage.
(applause)
Thank you, sir.
Roberto Rodriguez: Good morning, everyone.
Welcome to the White House.
We are so happy you're here.
I'm pleased to join you as Joshua mentioned.
My name is Roberto Rodriguez.
I'm the President's special assistant for education.
I thought it was fitting since you all are really in the
trenches working day in and day out to help make sure that we
have a great nation of lifelong learners,
that we would begin our morning by talking a little bit about
our education agenda.
I'd like to just give you a thumbnail sketch of some of the
things that we're focused on here in our administration on
education policy, might take a few questions,
and then hopefully that will continue the
conversation throughout.
You'll hear later today from our director of domestic policy,
Melody Barnes, a bit more about some of our agenda.
We really believe that strengthening our education
system is really critical to the future of the country.
The President has made education reform and improving our
education system from cradle all the way through career,
a top priority, a top pillar of his plan to win
the future, because he really believes that in order to out
build and out innovate and out perform the rest of the world,
we are in a real contest, and education is in part the engine
that helps move us forward.
So there's a strong economic imperative here.
We know that we've certainly lost some momentum when we look
at some of our key indicators in math and science achievement in
K-12 education.
We're losing about 30% of our high school students who don't
cross the finish line and aren't successful
in terms of graduating.
That's not just a matter of short changing their own
individual future.
It really is imperative for our country that we do better to
really make sure that we are providing the opportunities,
each and every one of our young people needs to succeed.
So there's a strong economic imperative there.
Just as strong and just as important is the moral
imperative, and I think that's something that I know you all
are well attuned to in the work that you do day in and day out.
But our strength and our ability to really live up to the most
important fundamentals of our country,
in terms of ensuring equity and opportunity and fairness,
and really ensuring that each and every one of our young
people has the opportunity to really fulfill his or her full
potential and live the American dream really rests on our
ability to do a better job of providing a well-rounded
complete and competitive education for each and every
one of our kids.
So, we are really focused on this as I mentioned along the
entire spectrum.
We are beginning in early childhood education.
We've launched a brand new competition that we are very
excited about, the application will be going out in mid-August
here in just a couple of weeks, called the Race to the Top-Early
Learning Challenge.
And here we are challenging our states across the country to
raise the bar on the quality of their early
childhood education programs.
We know we have about 11 million kids that spend some amount of
time outside of the home, outside of the care of their
parents before they reach kindergarten.
The quality of those early childhood programs
has to be high.
We know that the achievement gap that we often wrestle with in
K-12 education in higher education,
the college completion and college attainment that we are
still wrestling with, really begins early.
It begins at age 3.
We have an early vocabulary and language gap that starts between
our most affluent kids and their less affluent peers and
that persisted into a kindergarten readiness gap.
Our Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge says,
look we really need to do a better job of making sure that
we have a comprehensive set of standards and programs that
attend not just to cognitive early learning, early literacy,
early numeracy of our children, but also make sure that they are
healthy, that they have strong social and emotional development
and that they can really begin kindergarten ready for success.
So we're thrilled about this composition.
We have 37 states that have expressed intent to apply,
to compete for these funds, and we are going to be moving
that forward.
That rests on top of some investments we've made in core
programs like Head Start, like child care,
other key investments in early childhood home visiting.
Moving into K-12 education, there we've also launched a race
to the top to really improve the quality of our elementary and
secondary schools.
And a lot of that work really rests and spans
across four core areas.
We are really seeking to raise standards and make sure that the
expectations that we have for our kids and the levels of
learning are on par with what they will need in a new global
economy, what they will need to be able to succeed at a 21st
century workforce.
So we have a number of states that have joined a state led
effort to raise the rigor and relevance of their standards
and we are supporting that work.
Secondly, we are doing a lot to focus in on the quality of our
teaching workforce.
And to do more to really prepare, develop, support,
retain our most effective teachers.
And in particular, in our high need schools.
Our teachers are one of the greatest resources that we can
give our kids for their learning moving forward and we need to be
sure that we are elevating that profession,
we are supporting continued development of our teachers.
We don't have a system right now in teaching that really
identifies our best teachers, identifies our teachers that
really need the most help and need the most skill development
and bridge that gap.
And that's what we are seeking to do.
So our Race to the Top sets up some new systems to really look
at student performance, compare that to teacher effectiveness
and do a better job to really drive the support that all of
our teachers need to be able to succeed.
We are focused thirdly on turning around our lowest
performing schools.
The statistic I mentioned about the number of students we lose
every year, we have over half of our dropouts that attend about
1700 schools in this country, that comprises of about
three-quarters of our dropouts of color, our African-American,
and Latino dropouts.
So, the good news is we have a discrete universe of schools
that we know we can really -- if we double down with a national
plan to improve the quality of those schools we stand a chance
to curb this dropout rate.
So we have committed over $4 billion to really identify our
lowest performing schools, and to support ambitious
interventions in those schools, changes in curriculum,
changes in how teachers are supported and evaluated,
changes in how the school day looks,
changes in how we approach teaching and learning in
those schools.
And also changes in the staffing sometimes in some of those cases
as well.
So we are taking on about 1,000 of those schools right now and
we are moving forward.
Our Department of Education is administering the school
improvement grant program and we are really excited about the
results that we are going to be able to see in those schools.
It really is a new beginning, a new day
for many of those schools.
And then finally, we are focused on using data to improve
outcomes across the K-12 system and standing up some data
systems that will help make sure that our schools have the
information that they need to better respond to student needs
and instruction.
We are doing a lot on higher education as well.
You've heard a bit about the debt ceiling in the past couple
of days.
(laughter)
Joshua DuBois: Just a little bit.
Roberto Rodriguez: Just a little bit.
That includes fortunately some dollars to help sustain the Pell
Grant, about $17 billion in that bill that's been invested to
support the maximum Pell Grant, 5,550 per student.
The Pell Grant bill was one of the first bills
that the President introduced when he was a Senator in the U.S. Senate.
And this is a lifeline of opportunity now for over 9
million students.
We've been able to increase the Pell Grant by $819,
the maximum grants over the past two years.
We've seen over 2 million more students take advantage of Pell
to be able to better afford college.
This is critical.
We have a goal here that the President has set for us to lead
the world by the end of this decade,
by 2020 with the highest proportion of college graduates.
And that means we have to go from 9th in the world today to
first in the world where we have about 42% of our students
graduating from college, completing their degree of
our young people.
We need to get to over 60%.
So that requires an all-hands-on deck approach and certainly here
at the federal level we need to do a better job of addressing
affordability shoring up supports like Pell.
On the backend we are doing more to make sure that as students
graduate from college their loans are manageable.
We've made more generous the income-based repayment program.
That means that borrowers moving forward will be able to peg
their repayment of their loans at 10% of their monthly income.
And we've added an incentive there for students who enter
public service and say that after ten years,
if you keep pace with those loan payments,
the balance of your loans can be forgiven.
So we really do believe that in order to really win the future
we have to do a better job of making sure that we are shoring
up that support for our students and we are also going to ask for
your help at institutions at our higher education institutions
around the country.
Help us meet this charge of leading the world with the
highest proportion of college graduates from 2020.
It means that we need to do our part here.
We are hoping that at our institutions we'll be able to
look at better ways to deliver instruction and support results,
completion, persistence for our students.
We have persistence challenge.
We know that.
At our institutions of higher education many of our students
who come, in particular, our high needs students are not
always supported to be able to succeed and cross that finish
line and earn their degree or credential.
And we need to be sure that we're doing a better job of
making sure that each and every one of our young people who
enters college is able to be successful and complete.
So, we have a robust agenda.
This is not a democratic agenda.
This is not a republican agenda.
This is an agenda to really help move our country forward.
And we believe that education is a key lever to do that.
So thank you again for your attention.
We're thrilled to have you here and I'm happy to take -- we have
some time for questions.
Joshua DuBois: Maybe two questions.
Any questions for Roberto about our broader education agenda
before we focus in on interfaith?
Yes, please.
Could you just let us know your name too, where you're from.
Wakefield: Wakefield from the University of North Carolina.
I work with a church that is involved with (inaudible) children.
And one of the things that we see is that it's not so much
what's happening in the school, it's what happening elsewhere.
One girl that we have worked with didn't get to the open
house, didn't know who her teachers were going to be,
didn't know where to catch the bus, was completely lost in
terms of getting started for the school year because her parents
were not involved in it.
When it comes to homework her parents are not involved in any
of that.
So this is someone who the school did a good job,
but what's failing her is what is happening outside of school.
I wonder if there's a place for addressing that.
Roberto Rodriguez: Well, I think that's a perfect point.
You know, if you listen to the President talk about education,
I don't think there's one instance where he doesn't
mention the importance of parents in the lives
of their kids.
And usually he says turn off that TV and turn off that game
console and make sure you're sitting down and spending time
with your child, reading, doing homework, helping them succeed.
You know in part we are really trying to begin
this process early.
This is -- we've made this investment in home visiting,
and expanding that program.
And part of the health care bill provided some dollars to be able
to do that across the states.
And that's really sitting down with parents and acclimating
them to their child's development, their learning,
and helping them understand how they can contribute to
that process.
That has to be a process across the entire education system.
One thing we are focused on is, we look at redesigning the No
Child Left Behind Act is to double our investment at the
federal level and parent involvement and engagement and
to reconfigure that investment so that we are really
identifying some of the programs and practices that really are
effective at reaching our families and at helping them
really identify what they can do to support their kid's learning.
So we are excited about that redesign.
We have to get that moving in Congress yet.
But it's an important point.
Joshua DuBois: Outstanding. Well let's give Roberto a round of applause.
Roberto Rodriguez: Thank you so much.
(applause)
Joshua DuBois: Thanks you so much Roberto.
Again, I lead the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood
Partnerships here in the White House.
And our job is pretty straightforward.
The President has asked us to support local nonprofits,
both faith-based and secular in their work of delivering
services to people in need.
This is a basic notion that he's had for a long time,
dating back to his years as a faith-based community organizer
on the southside of Chicago that you know if we are really going
to put roofs over people's heads and food in the stomach of
hungry people and make sure the kids have the education they
need, a lot of that work is not going to happen in our centers
of government.
Instead it's going to happen with churches,
synagogues and temples and mosques and nonprofit
organizations who are working at the grassroots level every
single day.
And the job of my office is to come alongside those groups and
support their good work, to make sure that they have the
resources they need to succeed.
The way we do that functionally is that we manage 13 smaller
offices across government.
For example, we have a center for faith-based and neighborhood
partnerships at the Department of Labor that can help a local
congregation set up a job training program.
We have a center for faith-based and neighborhood partnerships at
the Department of Agriculture that works with churches and
synagogues and temples and mosques and nonprofits on food
and nutrition issues, so on and so forth,
that 13 federal agencies across the government,
we have a little nonprofit and faith-based engagement office
that helps local groups navigate the federal bureaucracy and
focus on serving people in need.
Now when we sat down with the President and thought about how
we were going to approach the work at the beginning of this
administration, we talked about a lot of things.
We talked about job training and hunger
and homelessness and foreclosure.
And then he said -- he said it completely unprompted, you know,
I want you to focus on interreligious collaboration,
on interfaith cooperation.
I want you to think about ways that you can use this office to
bring people from different religious backgrounds together.
Not to believe the same things.
He said, you know, I'm a committed Christian,
but I have friends from different religious backgrounds
and it's not that we have to all believe the same thing,
but we can work together to help people in need.
And he asked us to sort of grapple with that challenge.
And really everything we are doing,
everything we are talking about today flows from the President's
commitment in this area.
I think it's important for you all to know that.
But from there we did a number of things that helped move
towards that commitment.
And one of the key things was we formed an advisory council of
nonprofit and faith-based leaders from across the spectrum
who gave us some advice about programs that we could run to
advance this commitment.
And the program that you all are a part of is a key part of that
advisory council's recommendations.
You're going to hear more about that in a moment.
There's some folks who really did a tremendous amount of work
in thinking and, just all kinds of commitment to bring us to
this point.
And I want to acknowledge them now.
First, Mara Vanderslice Kelly, we are going to hear from him in
just a bit.
A senior adviser to our office coordinated that council and was
really instrumental in moving this entire effort forward.
So Mara, would you mind standing up so we can acknowledge your
good work.
(applause)
We also have an incredible team working on this now.
We have Eboo Patel who we'll hear from in just a moment,
the founder and President of the Interfaith Youth Core,
a member of the president's advisory council and a true
partner all the way through this effort.
Eboo, would you mind standing, please.
(applause)
Worked closely with Zeenot Rahman who is -- we shamelessly
stole from IFYC and brought her on to the faith-based initiative
who is here and then Mary Ellen Giess from IFYC is here as well
and is doing tremendous work.
And there are some great folks from our center staffs,
Reverend Brenda Girton Mitchell and Kim Bedell,
who I believe has been emailing and calling and bugging everyone
here to bring us to this point.
(applause)
Give them a round of applause.
And then John Kelly who helped pull everything together.
John is out here somewhere.
(applause)
Thank you.
Most importantly, I want to thank all of you.
You know, the response has really been tremendous.
We were hopeful, that's the positive way of saying worried
about the number of folks that were going to respond to this,
saying, you know, if we can just get 100 we'll be in great shape.
We are thrilled to announce it.
Over 250 schools from around the country have committed to a year
long interfaith service program.
(applause)
And a lot of folks helped us and helped schools move towards that
commitment, but there was a particular commitment on behalf
of college and university presidents and chancellors who
really invested in this and made sure this moved forward.
And a number of them are here with us today.
Would you all mind standing?
Any presidents or chancellors that are here?
Give them a round of applause.
(applause)
So again, we have a great day of events.
This morning at south court you're going to hear from senior
administration officials and others who are going to sort of
lay the ground work for what this is all about.
And then we are going to dig into details of how the various
ways that you all plan on operating these programs over at
George Washington University but at first,
just to set some of the context, I want to introduce Mara
Vanderslice Kelly who's going to share a bit of the history
of the interfaith challenge and the work of the president's
advisory council.
We are going to be pretty brief on even of these sections so
that we can move through the morning and then get you over to
George Washington.
So let's welcome Mara to the stage.
(applause)
Mara Vanderslice Kelly: Thank you, Joshua, so much.
Good morning, everyone.
Welcome to the White House.
This has been more than a year in the making to get to this
point today.
So it's truly with joy in our hearts for all of us that have
spent hours and hours working on this initiative to see you all
sitting here today and have made these commitments to promoting
interfaith service on your campuses in the coming year.
As Joshua said, one of the most important signature elements of
our faith-based initiative is the President's advisory council
for faith-based and neighborhood partnerships.
And based on the President's charge to us,
to find ways to promote interfaith cooperation,
interreligious cooperation we formed a specific task force of
this advisory council that looks specifically to give
recommendations to our office and to the President on how we
could foster really a culture, a movement of interreligious
cooperation and service across our nation.
And I just want to read a recommendation from that report
which says that they recommend to our office and to the
President to initiate a public campaign to scale and strengthen
program partnerships with federal agencies that increase
dialogue and service between people from a diversity of
faith-based and secular backgrounds to serve the
common good.
And specifically it proposes that the administration seek to
achieve the following goal by the end of 2012.
That it says on 500 U.S. college campuses the White House office
of faith-based and neighborhood partnerships should convene a
gathering of senior university officials to make concrete
commitments to advance university and community
interfaith partnerships.
So I'm looking at Zeenot and Eboo and others who helped write
these recommendations to know that that seed that had been
planted with the advisory council report has truly
come to fruition today.
And since the recommendations of this report we had a gathering
with many of you last June, where a significant amount of
your feedback from colleges and universities and seminaries
across the country helped put into sort of -- the shape of
this initiative began to take shape.
And it was really over the course of all of the last year
that many of our staff worked with White House officials,
worked with the office of the President,
worked with the President himself,
worked with education advisers and our service advisers,
the Department of Education, the corporation for national
community service to pull together this initiative.
And just for your all's background and knowledge it
takes a lot of work to pull together a presidential
challenge that's going to be issued by the President to
institutions of higher education across the company.
And we have a limited number of staff in our office.
We have about three or four staff that worked in the White
House office.
So I just want you all to be clear about what a significant
commitment our office has made to this particular initiative.
We put in hours and hours of time with folks from the
Interfaith Youth Corps helping on the back side,
Zeenot Rahman and I were on the phone every day for, you know,
weeks at a time trying to pull all of this together.
And it just goes to show you all what a commitment our office,
because of the President's leadership and Joshua's
leadership have made to getting this challenge on the table.
So we know that you all now are going to be putting in hours and
hours of work, you already have in putting your plans together,
and well be dedicated to this as you roll out your interfaith
service programs throughout the coming year,
and I just want you to know how much we stand behind you.
We've made this a really top priority,
we look forward to working with you throughout the coming year.
So thank you so much.
(applause)
Joshua DuBois: Great.
A key part of this interfaith service challenge is the
involvement of our national service structure and apparatus
in this work.
Americorps and Senior Corps and other key components of national
service really helped inform the way that we approached this
work, and Clay Middleton was a key part of that,
and I want to thank Clay for his tremendous work.
Let's give him a round of applause.
(applause)
With that I want to introduce Paul Monteiro.
Paul is in the Office of Public Engagement here at the White
House, and he's the Religious Outreach Coordinator for OPE,
and has done a lot to bring us to this date.
So Paul, do you want to offer a few remarks, please?
Paul Monteiro: Well, good morning, everyone.
Audience members: Good morning.
Paul Monteiro: Again, my name is Paul Monteiro, I work in the Office of Public
Engagement as the liaison that we have to the religious community.
The basic function of our office is to connect grassroots leaders
like yourselves with the business of the White House.
That's it.
But if you think about it, you know, my staff,
I don't know if Si's in the room, my one intern,
that's my staff.
(laughter)
And as Mara mentioned, I mean, the White House staff isn't the
largest in the world.
And even if we had, you know, hundreds or thousands of people
working in this building, it's a big country,
and there are so many people out there who would otherwise not
hear anything about what the White House or what the
President does on a daily basis, and more importantly,
how it affects and is relevant to their life.
So our job and our value is basically in as much as we can
empower people like you.
A lot of what we do in the White House Office of Public
Engagement is trying to create a narrative as well.
Whether we're talking about, you know,
the debt limit or immigration or any other issue,
we try to humanize the story because we're in touch with
folks to point to specific examples that illustrate the
point the President's trying to make.
And with the religious community the work couldn't be more
important, and especially the time that you're
gathering right now.
The time couldn't be more ripe for our partnership.
A lot of what we do focus on is working with the,
with smaller communities, Muslim Americans specifically,
and other, other communities that aren't normally engaged
with the White House on a regular basis.
And it's coming up quickly on the ten year anniversary of the
9/11 attacks, where you will see a narrative that we want to
promote to show that, you know, the strength of this country,
the resilience of this country is often found in the work we're
doing across religious minds to make this country safer.
And if you think about last year's anniversary, you know,
we're hoping to beat that.
I mean, last year's anniversary was unfortunately marked by
folks who, you know, sought to find attention burning Korans or
distorting religions.
And if you look at the polling, Gallup just came out with some
numbers yesterday, unfortunately the levels of Islamophobia are
higher than they've been in ten years.
So the time for the work you're doing is so important,
and it's not just about any one particular community,
but the misunderstanding that often flows from religious
differences isn't going away any time soon,
and that was something else that came out in the Gallup's
study yesterday.
And so much of our work is working to convene,
working to inform, and working to empower people through
information and connect them with the resources
of their government.
So I would love to keep in touch with all of you and work with
you as much as possible, and on a range of issues, you know,
in a nonpartisan way make sure at the least you're informed
about what we're doing, what the President has said,
what he's doing, where he's going,
and look for opportunities to work with you and empower your
members and the people you represent to tell that story.
To show this great work that's happening not only domestically
on college campuses, but around the world.
I met a few friends from overseas this morning on my way
in, and hopefully through that partnership and through that
engagement we can tell a better story, a more accurate story,
and demonstrate the ways that religious diversity has
contributed to our national life and
promoted our national security.
So thank you very much for having me this morning.
I would love -- should I do questions or --
Joshua DuBois: We're going to keep moving and then have
some questions at the end.
Paul Monteiro: Well, I'll see you all later in the day.
Have a good one.
(applause)
Joshua DuBois: Thank you so much, Paul,
you're doing tremendous work in OPE.
Now we're going to have a wonderful panel of folks who
are coming at this issue from different perspectives.
We have two people who are going to share with us a bit
more about the federal perspective and then
about working on the ground.
Before we do that I want to say hello to our friends tuning in
on WhiteHouse.gov/Live, we're being live streamed now,
so watch yourselves, okay?
(laughter)
Hi everybody. Okay.
With that, we're going to first have Aseem Mishra.
It's really an honor to have Aseem here,
he's the Deputy Chief of Staff at the Corporation for National
and Community Service.
He's going to talk about how interfaith service fits into the
work and priorities of CNCS, which is the federal agency
that coordinates service and volunteerism here in
the United States.
And then we're going to Zeenot Rahman.
Zeenot is the Deputy Director of the Faith-Based and Neighborhood
Partnerships Office at the U.S.
Agency for International Development.
As I said before, she was at the Interfaith Youth Corps where she
worked on this program before coming over to USAID,
so she's going to share a bit about both perspectives there.
After Aseem and Zeenot we're going to hear from Leo Lambert,
the President of Elon University,
who's doing tremendous work in this area, and Aditi Singh,
a student at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.
So with that, let's welcome Aseem.
(applause)
Aseem Mishra: So I'll be brief, I know we've got a long agenda for today.
Speak from there?
Well, I'll speak from here.
So I'm Deputy Chief of Staff at the Corporation for National
Community Service, and what I really want to share with you is
that the work that you guys are doing today is,
really should be applauded, but I think what should be applauded
more is the work you're going to be doing for the next year.
Because that work is truly going to be inspiring.
And the way it fits in with what we're doing at the Corporation
for National Community Service is that it is,
it is incumbent upon us to ensure that when the President
signed the Serve America Act over two years ago,
we wanted to make sure that people weren't just engaged in
frenetic service activity all across the nation,
that it wasn't a service for the sake of service,
that it was service for solutions,
for community solutions.
That people come together to solve problems of different
faith backgrounds, and that's good, that's an important piece.
Social cohesion is very important to us,
but it's not important if people are just doing the activity
without a solution in mind, without focusing
on community problems.
The Serve America Act helped us focus on six focus areas.
Amongst those are education, so Roberto talked about turning
schools around.
We need folks, we need Jewish, Hindus, Sikhs, humanists,
agnostics, atheists all engaged together in solving this crisis
in our schools.
We need to promote healthy futures.
We need to promote a clean energy environment.
We need to ensure that veterans are reintegrated
into our society.
And all this work needs to be done through the interfaith
collaborations that you're going to be promoting through
your schools.
So we cannot do this in the name of service alone,
we have to do this for community solutions.
And that's the main point that I'd like to drive in the short
time that I have with you.
(applause)
Zeenot Rahman: Good morning, everybody.
Audience Members: Good morning.
Zeenot Rahman: How are you?
Audience Members: Good.
Zeenot Rahman: So as has been said, I'm coming from four and a half years at
Interfaith Youth Corps previous to my last four months at the
Agency for International Development.
So this gathering is just, you know,
a perfect cohesion for me about, of everything I've worked on in
the last four and a half years, along with the things that we're
trying to drive at the Agency for International Development.
As Joshua mentioned, I am the Deputy Director of the
Faith-Based Office, and we work with faith communities who
engage in development work overseas.
And so we know, you know, Eboo says it all the time,
but faith-based communities have very high amounts of social
capital and we know that faith communities are the first to
reach the most vulnerable populations,
whether here domestically or around the world.
And when there's a need, they are the first to respond.
And so our office works with small NGOs,
large faith-based organizations that are doing development work
around the country, around the world.
But also an important part of what we do is engage faith
communities here and engage people, you know,
who care about interfaith collaboration and interfaith
cooperation to work together here to achieve
solutions overseas.
And so I think you all are aware that there is a wide-scale
drought in the Horn of Africa right now, and Somalia, Kenya,
and Ethiopia are being affected by drought.
Somalia is being disproportionately affected,
the south and central region, and there is a famine.
And so last week I traveled with the head of our Horn of Africa
task force to Columbus, Ohio, and to Minneapolis, Minnesota,
to engage with Somali-American communities to talk about what
they're seeing on the ground, to talk about the programs that
they're doing, and to talk about how we can connect that.
Because that's really the goal of our office, is to connect.
And as Aseem said, to not just think about short-scale
interventions but long-term solutions so that we don't see
this type of stuff repeat over and over again.
And in speaking with these communities, you know,
USAID has this year given over $400 million in the region.
Secretary Clinton just announced an intervention of $28 million
just for the famine, the famine victims right now.
But it's not -- but the stories that we really need to hear are
from the ground, are what's happening to people's families,
are what people are seeing at refugee camps.
And so what, the stories that I heard when I was in Columbus
was, were stories of bake sales, of community car washes,
and not just the Somali community but Somalis and all of
their neighbors joining together to raise money for famine
victims overseas.
And, you know, I heard kind of story after story about this.
I heard from young people who are just seized by what's
happening there, you know, and are creating Facebook campaigns
and are doing things on their college campuses to address the
solution where in the next couple of months if we don't,
you know, act and do something, a couple
million lives can be lost.
And so when you think about kind of going back to campuses and we
think about, you know, service and 9/11, you know,
and we know that as Americans we are going to do this anyway,
you know, but to do it in an intentional way,
in a way where we're celebrating our diversity and we're using
the strength of the experience of our Somali-American
neighbors, of our faith-based neighbors, of our, you know,
secular partners, but everybody who very much cares about people
around the world, that we think about this as a solution and
that you engage with our agency as, you know,
we think about the long-term solutions of, you know,
food sustainability, of country-led plans, but that,
you know, we're all connecting everything we're doing together.
So I welcome you all to stay in touch with me and continue
to work on this and many other solutions that we
can find together. Thanks.
(applause)
Joshua DuBois: We have Leo Lambert from Elon University.
He's going to talk about some of the great work
that Elon's doing.
Dr. Leo Lambert: Good morning, everyone.
Audience Members: Good morning.
Dr. Leo Lambert: Elon means oak in Hebrew.
We were founded by a main-line Protestant denomination,
and we serve a lot of Roman Catholic students
from the Northeast.
So there's a little bit of interdenomination or
interdenominational and interfaith work
by way of introduction.
I was asked to say just a word about how I got involved
in this agenda.
One of the perks of being a university president is that
you have some incredible house guests sometime in the
presidential home, and my family and I were privileged a few
years ago to have Archbishop Desmond Tutu as our house guest
for two nights.
And to experience the incredible privilege of celebrating morning
prayers and the Eucharist with the Archbishop,
and to be in a room with Archbishop Desmond Tutu praying
for the world and every crisis in the world and every people in
the world.
Praying for everyone, all, is a profound experience in
one's life.
I certainly found that.
Last year we had the opportunity to return a visit to the
Archbishop in Capetown and to visit Saint George's Cathedral,
which was his seat, again, to worship with him and to see how
Saint George's has evolved itself as an institution into
a multi-faith center.
When you walk into the narthex of that church there's a
magnificent large photograph of Desmond Tutu linked arm in arm
with a Muslim Imam and a Jewish Rabbi marching
against apartheid.
And to me, that photograph symbolizes the power of
interfaith partnerships in creating important
social change.
When we were in South Africa with 28 students and two faculty
members, our students had an opportunity to think about the
place of religion in society, and to see in that society how
certain mainline churches had been used to deny basic human
rights to uphold a corrupt regime.
And to contrast that with the work of the Moravian Church,
which has so many important ties to North Carolina,
and talk to many people of color in South Africa who uphold the
Moravian Church as a place where people take seriously the charge
of being Christ in the world.
And as a Christian person, to me,
that's what it comes -- that's what it comes down to.
Experiences like that for our students, I think,
get at the really important questions of what does it
mean to be a liberally educated person and a
global citizen today.
And they underscore for liberal arts universities like Elon,
how important it is for students to have religious understanding
and knowledge about the world's faiths if they are going to go
into the world and truly act as global citizens.
So what are we doing on our campus?
First, we try to be a place that welcomes everybody,
people of every religious faith, people of no religious faith,
and probably the largest group of college students
demographically today: Those who describe themselves as
spiritually seeking but not religious.
We have a lot of those students on our campuses,
and I see a lot of heads nodding in agreement in the audience.
We're trying to make sure that when students come to campus
they feel affirmed in terms of if they are Roman Catholic,
they're connected with our Newman community.
If they are Jewish, 7 percent of our student body at Elon is
Jewish, that they are connected with a robust
Halal community on campus.
But most importantly, we are about to break ground this fall
on a new multi-faith center, a building that we're going to
spend between four and five million dollars on that is not
going to be a trophy building.
We've visited a lot of campuses where there are magnificent
chapels and churches that we see empty.
What we want to create is a facility that is going to
promote robust interfaith dialogue and work,
that will bring students across religious faiths together for
celebration and sharing, and to be a place that will foster
academic partnerships, research, colloquia and so forth related
to this agenda.
I was also asked to say a brief word about my role as president
with regard to moving this agenda forward,
and it's pretty simple.
First, this work is an important part of our
strategic plan at Elon.
Our number one goal in our strategic plan is about
diversity and global engagement, and the multi-faith agenda is
central to that.
Secondly, we make this work visible on our campus.
We were delighted to have Eboo Patel as part of a powerful
panel on campus this spring moderated by an Elon parent
Brian Williams of NBC News that included a number of other
people that are addressing the most significant problems that
our generation is passing on to the young people of generation
that we are, the generation that we are teaching in our colleges
and universities today, problems like the national debt,
energy security, environmental issues,
the problems of political gridlock in this country,
the problems of decaying public education.
And to this agenda we add the critical issue of promoting
religious tolerance towards creating peace in the world.
Presidents I think have an obligation to fly that flag.
Thank you very much.
(applause)
Aditi Singh: Good morning, everyone.
So I'm the student voice.
(laughter)
So my name is Aditi Singh, and I'm going to be a rising senior
at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign,
and I'm here to talk about what caused me to do this
kind of work.
So I've been lucky to have the opportunity to travel the world,
having been born in India, a majority Hindu nation,
lived in Kuwait for ten years, a predominantly Muslim nation,
and now making my home in the United States,
a country that embraces everyone no matter their faith or
philosophical background.
As a Christian in these places, I not only just lived there,
but engaged with the community, building relationships with
friends, teachers, and the community itself.
In my life, interfaith cooperation was always and still
is a social norm, leading to deeper relationships and
building bridges in places where there is usually division.
And as a Christian, I've always been taught to not only be good
to your neighbors, whether it be in the form of charity or
service, but that by cooperation I gain something, too.
I learn.
Having been blessed to go to a diverse school,
high school in the heart of Chicago,
I looked forward to attending a school of 40,000 students
where the people I meet were positively influenced
and reinforced education that I was receiving in the classroom,
gaining leadership skills and also real world experience at
the same time.
One of the more explicit ways that I am learning is by being
president of my campus interfaith service organization,
Interfaith in Action.
That has already achieved something tremendous by
envisioning million meals for Haiti in Spring of 2010.
From that, a locally initiated project Meals of Hope was born
to address the fact that there is a 73 percent increase in the
number of households experiencing low food security
in my campus community in recent years.
Interfaith in Action in turn focuses on Meals of Hope through
fund raising and support.
Because of this, participating in the President's challenge
seems obvious.
The fact that the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign campus
and its students will be working together with the local
community to address local issues while acknowledging the
diversity of culture, faith and traditions that bring people
together to do this type of service work,
ensures that it's not just the usual 30 students that show up
but a campus-wide sustainable administration-supported
student-invested project that bolsters the university's
public engagement.
So I'm excited to be here today to learn from everyone about the
best possible ways to do so, and excited to see how as students
we have something unique to offer.
(applause)
Joshua DuBois: I'd like to invite all of our speakers to join us for
the panel, please, that would be grade.
Zeenot and Aseem and Leo.
I'll ask just two kind of beginning questions,
and then we're going to open it up to audience questions.
As you all are taking your seats,
the first thing I'd love your feedback on on behalf of the
group is if you had to offer one piece of advice to an
institution that's just beginning this work this school
year, if you had to distill all the things that you've learned
in your various areas into one leading piece of advice,
what would that be?
What's the first thing that folks should think about as they
begin an interfaith cooperation project on their campus?
Zeenot Rahman: I would say that there is, you're not -- you're not
starting from scratch, that there is a lot of
precedent out there.
Obviously you all know that the Interfaith Youth Corps has
resources, but so do the -- so does the White House Office of
Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
We have a toolkit that you can use to work and look at our
policy priorities to see how we can work together,
but also your peers and your colleagues in this room I think
are invaluable resources to talk about, you know,
to think about what does an action plan look like,
what does a strategic calendar look like,
and that some of this work and thinking has already been done.
Joshua DuBois: Great. Thanks, Zeenot. Yeah.
Dr. Leo Lambert: It seems self-evident, but I think to make the planning team
that's going to chart this work broadly inclusive is
very important, and not only inclusive of individuals of
various religious backgrounds, but various sectors of the
campus as well.
I would say especially don't forget the faculty.
Faculty have an important perspective on these issues,
and it's vital that they be a part of this dialogue.
We've been very fortunate to have committed leadership in
this -- on this agenda for a very long time at Elon,
so this was not a difficult place for us to get started.
Joshua DuBois: Thanks, Leo. Anyone else?
Aseem Mishra: Yeah, I would just say in my haste I forgot to give
you my call to action before I left,
but I think it fits very well with this.
I would say that, you know, really dream big,
focus your efforts, and stick it out.
So again, I reiterate that it's not just about doing service
activity with interfaith communities, but dream big.
What do you want to change in the community?
Focus in on those areas that the interfaith challenge directs you
towards: Education, health, veterans, disasters.
Focus on those things and really make an effort to
change some thing.
So don't direct your efforts towards many things,
but focus on one.
And the second thing I'd say is something that you do very well
already, which is bringing people together,
but use government tools to help you do that.
So when you have service activities that are changing one
thing and are focused on one thing, use Serve.gov,
which is the President's United We Serve website landing page
that allows you to enroll others into your efforts as well.
So it's a great resource, it's Serve.gov,
and I would encourage you to use that.
Joshua DuBois: Thanks, Aseem. Aditi?
Aditi Singh: To add to that at the same time, I would say don't underestimate
the power of small steps, especially going back to a
campus that you may feel like doesn't have a strong interfaith
relationship with other organizations in the school.
Building that momentum to create that sustainable environment
where this is something that you can continue doing even after,
you know, your seniors that have been working on this project
graduate are those small steps, and those are really important also.
Joshua DuBois: That's a great point.
Leo Lambert: I would also add never, ever, underestimate what a committed
group of 20-year-olds can accomplish.
(laughter)
Joshua DuBois: That's right, as we see with Aditi, of course.
My second question before we open it up to the group is,
you know, what do you say to a student who really wants to
participate in an interfaith service,
but it's also a deep value of his or her faith to maintain the
integrity of that faith and to sort of not water it down or to
maintain strong theological beliefs,
what would you say to that, Singh.
Aditi Singh: I guess I could take that one, I've had many
a conversation around this.
A lot of people when they come with that question I always
respond that for me personally I've developed my faith and
grown in my faith because I learn more about what calls me
to do this kind of work while explaining to this
person to participate.
So any service event if someone says, you know,
are there going to be people there that are going to try and
convert me, I would tell them we've created a safe environment
for everyone to share and to talk over what brings them there
to do the work without feeling like they need to explain
themselves for it.
Joshua DuBois: So it has actually strengthened your faith?
Aditi Singh: Yeah.
Joshua DuBois: That's great.
Anyone else want to respond to that?
Let's say we open up to some questions then to our Panel.
I know it's not a shy group.
Come on! Any questions?
Yeah, please.
If you could just introduce yourselves, too, yeah.
Thanks for jumping in the water first.
Janice Butler: Janice Butler from Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.
I'm interested in finding out about where the Administration
sees our work in public service.
Certainly with the debt issues looming large this week we have
concerns about government cutbacks.
And it's are you affected, you know, public service employees,
and certainly recession.
So faith-based groups and universities and public service
institutions are called on, we've got 90, 000
students now involved in AmeriCorps and great training
programs for future leaders organizers.
What are we going to do if those any of those
opportunities are threatened?
Joshua DuBois: Well, thank you.
It's a great and timely question.
I'm sure Singh is going to speak to this.
I would say, you know, broadly, you know,
we have some leading priorities.
We obviously have to get our fiscal house in order.
It's a real challenge now and one that we take very seriously.
But we also, and the President has been very clear,
that we need to maintain support for programs that are impacting
and serving folks who need our help in this country.
And we can't, we can't lose focus on public service and
national service as well.
And he's really been fighting for national service programs.
Aseem, would you like to add something?
Aseem Mishra: Yeah, I would add the Corporation for National
and Community Service for those that don't know is a federal
agency that leads programs like AmeriCorps, Senior Corps,
Learn and Serve, and, you know, we're very fortunate to have,
like Josh said, a President that backs us up,
a First Lady that really cares about national service.
So when those negotiations are happening,
when last year House Resolution 1 zeroed us out,
it's because of the President's backing,
the President's belief in national service as a strategy
for community solutions that we were able to retain
94% of our budget.
And that was no small fete.
There were some real important folks that were really
passionate that saw the economic sense in backing nonprofits and
American members that are helping communities through
nonprofits to make changes in communities.
That's why I think it's really important and the work that we
do is not seen as just a bunch of people getting together
improving their relationships but not improving the community.
We cannot do that.
Your stories have to highlight the fact that there was social
cohesion and interreligious cohesion built and developed,
but also that community problems were solved.
If we cannot show that, the folks that do not believe in
the work that we're doing will not be converted;
will not be transformed.
We need to trans -- we need to have stories that really,
really change people's minds about the power of service and
the power of interfaith cohesion.
Joshua DuBois: That's exactly right.
And, you know, that notion of retaining budget and support for
the Corporation for National Service,
it's not just a D.C.-based fight.
What that means is that, you know,
seniors who are able to participate in Senior Corp
and, therefore, you know, enter into their later years with
dignity and a sense of purpose that really impacts a community.
AmeriCorps volunteers that are supporting countless nonprofits
around the country, that's where these budget fights really
matter and that's what the President is really
fighting for.
Yes, please.
Susan Murphy: Susan Murphy, Cornell University.
I'd love to hear you talk about a point Aseem you just made
about solving real community problems.
As you worked in your projects how the community came to
partner with you in the interfaith community.
I wasn't sure you were talking community focused problems,
not just groups working together.
Joshua DuBois: Well, I think a lot of folks can answer that.
Yeah, go ahead.
Aseem Mishra: Does someone else want to take it first?
I mean, I think our role is, you know,
our role is a national role, so the way we've ensured that the
folks in the community will be solving focused problems is
through our strategic plan.
We've made sure that our plan is actually very aligned with the
focus areas that you had in the challenge.
In fact, it's the same focus areas and that's no coincidence.
And we want to make sure that folks are aligned nationally,
but we want to make sure that the ideas the problems that
are identified and the solutions that are identified are local
solutions and local identification of what
the actual problem is.
Is it a problem of parents.
Is it a problem of schools.
Is it a problem of community organizations in the fight to
turn schools around.
We don't want to dictate that.
We know that there is, in each community,
the problems are different and so the solutions will
be different.
So in terms of what we have done at the Corporation for National
Community Service is framed what,
the ways that the work will be done and that there will be a
focus on that work.
And I think ten years ago with the corporation it was all about
increasing numbers.
We don't really care about the numbers of people volunteering.
We care about the numbers of lives that have changed.
Joshua DuBois: Aditi, do you want to talk about how you all
sort of worked with the community on your project?
Aditi Singh: Yeah, I would say that you have to develop strong
relationships with community leaders that are already doing
work around campus.
And that too many times someone on campus decides that this is
the project that they're going to do and then they go out into
the community to do this.
But if you really involve people who are already doing work it
tends to be more successful and you tend to be identifying
something that actually needs to be done on something that you're
imposing on people.
Joshua DuBois: Leo, do you want to speak to that at all?
Leo Lambert: I think that that was just eloquently said.
And I would echo that point.
Joshua DuBois: Great. Thanks. Wonderful.
Other questions?
Keiran and then here, please, yeah.
Susan Henry: I'm Susan Henry from Emory University.
And I would like to ask Zeenot, our work has had standing credit
of international interfaith work and how does USAID determine
what situations it follows?
Zeenot Raham: So we also have a strategic plan and USAID is an agency
that works in regions but also has technical bureaus
that work on different solutions of global health, immunization,
science and technology.
There is, I mean, really if you're doing work
internationally towards development there's going
to be a place at USAID that it plugs into.
And so I think at the Agency for International Development
the focus is very much on development solutions and
harnessing all resources towards that.
And I would say the challenge is more to bring the value of
interreligious collaboration and interfaith to those solutions.
And so to have stories of work that's happening whether in
communities here that are impacting lives overseas or
overseas, is an important part of the kind of ammunition that
we need to, you know, always affirm and underscore the value
of faith-based communities and of interfaith collaboration.
Joshua DuBois: And I would say there are USA missions all
around the globe, too.
And it's not necessarily a well-known fact and so in any
place that you all are making investments there's likely a
USA mission there that we can actually work to connect you to.
Susan Henry: I'd like that.
Joshua DuBois: We'd be happy to. Thank you.
I think we're going to go here and then back here.
Yes, please.
Joan Wheels: Joan Wheels from (inaudible) College.
My question is several of you have mentioned the importance of
gathering stories of successful interfaith projects and
community cooperation.
What is your plan from the office to communicate these
stories to tell for example the rest of the country about
all the good work and the results that are happening
in these communities?
Because, you know, typically you don't
hear these kinds of things.
Joshua DuBois: Absolutely, well, thank you for that.
Well, we have lots of plans and we're excited about it.
We hope to do some video with you all and actually visit some
sites around the country and compile this together for the
end of the year.
We hope to celebrate folks around the country at the
conclusion of the school year and provide some recognition on
behalf of the President.
We're working very closely with our new media team here at the
White House to put some of this on the web.
And beyond some of those core things we want to hear from you.
If there are ways that we can, for example,
send a surrogate speaker out to an interfaith event that you're
doing and acknowledge and applaud that work on behalf
of the Administration.
If we can do a blog post.
If something great is happening, and we can do a blog post or we
can tweet about it from our White House twitter account,
which is actually our faith-based office twitter
account is "Partners For Good."
Anyone on twitter in here, by the way?
Not necessarily right now, but in general.
(laughter)
And feel free to tweet now, by the way.
(laughter)
But it's Partners For Good.
And we'll be sharing things from that account as well.
So lots of different strategies both between the Administration
and the interfaith youth corps.
But if you have ideas we'd love to here.
This is really going to be a communicative process.
Kim Bedel and others have already been in close touch
with you and we want to keep that going in the future.
Aseem Mishra: If I could just add --
Joshua DuBois: Yeah, please.
Aseem Mishra: -- I think it's important with the stories,
I think it's important what the stories are,
but I think it's also important who is telling the story.
So I think it's great that you'll be channeling stories
to us and that we'll be providing the platforms
to get the stories out.
But I think it's also important for you to get the stories out
because to members of Congress, it means a lot coming from their
own districts.
Joshua DuBois: That's right.
Aseem Mishra: So for our agency and our budget fight that's
going to come up, yes, it's important that we know your
stories, but please, please, do share your stories through our
platforms and your platforms as well.
Joshua DuBois: Thank you for making that point.
I actually saw some great pieces even coming into this event from
local -- my friends in Buffalo, the Buffalo News,
any Buffalonians here?
There we go, that covered them.
And I think I saw something, William & Mary or,
anyhow -- there you go -- great.
So please continue to spread the word.
Issue a press release.
Tell them that you're involved in this project and really get
the word out about it.
I have time for two more quick questions and then we're going
to close out.
Yes, please, and then we'll come here.
Alex Kem: Hi, I'm Alex Kem, I'm chaplain at Brandeis University.
I'm a constant Chaplin and also director for the faith-based
organization of the oldest interfaith organization in
Greater Boston Metropolitan Ministries.
I'm wondering about two great moments in the life of an
academic here: September 11th and Martin Luther King Day.
And I've heard that September 11th has been framed in some
people's mind as an opportunity for interfaith service,
yet this year the legacy is in some sense will be observed in
a specialized meeting of the tenth anniversary.
I'm wondering might there be occasions for our campuses
across America to do something collaboratively
on each of those days?
I know we have major plans in Boston.
But is there one being planned plans on these occasions?
Joshua DuBois: Well, listen, yeah, we're definitely involved in the
White House planning around the 9/11 Anniversary.
And I will say at the outset that our first and most
important task is to really honor the victims and honor that
day, that horrible day ten years ago and that's even before we
get to other important tasks around interfaith collaboration
we're going to focus there.
The victims that came from all backgrounds and beliefs and
really, you know, that shaped the future of this country.
Beyond that, I absolutely think that there is a role for
interfaith service and this is a uniquely-timed launch.
And so we'll be happy to work with folks to bring folks
together around that notion.
If you have ideas, especially after talking with other friends
here today and you want to share them with me or our staff at the
conclusion of the day, we'd be happy to work with you on that.
Yes, Eva, please.
Speaker: Alex, to add to that, just very quickly,
we've just launched something called the "Be Better Together"
campaign for 9/11, we're happy to give that toolkit out to
folks in this room and you spread it as far
and wide as possible.
The big idea is that religion ought to be a bridge of
cooperation and not a barrier or division of (inaudible).
Joshua DuBois: Thank you so much, Eva.
Last question, here, please.
And we'll have plenty of time for questions later
on in the day, too.
Davis Horam: I'm Davis Horam [phonetic] with Claremont Lincoln University at
the School of Theology, at Claremont School of Theology.
I'm also a full time minister from California and Kern County
which I'm proud to say is that I am working within because it's
the *** capital of California and, therefore,
one of the worst drug areas in California.
And we also happen to be sending more people to life terms in
prison under the three strike law than any other place in
the United States.
And those populations which tend to get those terms tend to be
males, they tend to be Hispanic, they tend to be
African-American, and therefore the populations that we're
basically incarcerating for the rest of their lives are being
removed from families and from those communities.
One of the things that I heard one of these speakers speak
about was try to focus on one area and particularly be very
good at that.
But in these particular type of communities that we work within
there really isn't a way to target one area without having a
whole complexity of other issues that are surrounding both their
socioeconomic status and, in particular,
and this is where the question is going,
with a community that is very conservative which will not --
which does not embrace kind of interfaith kind of dialogue and
is in opposition to the current Administration where I'm
working, and so those are the persons who predominantly have
control of the state and local levels in those areas as well as
law enforcement and so forth, which seem to be -- well,
they're not seeming to be, they are helping perpetuate
the problem with their particular type of policies.
So I wonder what the response is from the Administration,
from yourself, as to we can do our job as an interfaith
population but what do we do when it is the local, county,
city and state officials which are actually causing a lot of
the problems in these communities which makes it very
difficult for to us do our job.
Joshua DuBois: Well, thank you for that.
I think it's a critical question with a lot of answers that I
could give, most of them would not be focused in the direction
of interfaith cooperation but instead on sort of the political
electoral process and so forth, and so I think it's outside of
the scope of our conversation today.
I would say, though, and just to focus on the issue of drugs and
the impact that it has on local communities and solutions to
that and I agree that the solutions are multifaceted,
this happens to be an area where there is a fair amount of
bipartisan agreement in terms of intervening on criminal justice
issues, on ex-offender reentry, individuals coming out of
incarceration and on impacting those who are incarcerated.
We'd be happy to connect you with organizations like Prison
Fellowship and others that are actually staunchly conservative
organizations but they're taking a very progressive approach to
issues of crime, violence, drugs and reentry.
And they may be able to speak to folks in your local community,
especially those that are more conservative,
in ways that the interfaith community may not be able to.
So I know that's a bit separate from our conversation today but
we have great relationships with organizations like Prison
Fellowship and we'd be happy to connect you with them.
Thank you.
Well, friends, I'm sorry, but we have to wrap up the Q&A
portion, so we're going to move to our last piece of
this morning's dialogue.
But let's thank our Panel for their tremendous contributions.
(applause)
And now I am excited to introduce a dynamo of the
faith-based office, the Director of our Center for Faith-based
and Neighborhood Partnerships at the Department of Education,
Reverend Brenda Girton Mitchell.
Brenda has a tremendous history at the intersection of religion
and public life.
She directed the National Council of Churches Washington
office for a while.
She is an ordained minister herself and
a Baptist denomination.
Has worked with folks in this town from across the religious
spectrum in an impactful, impassionate,
and empathetic way for a long time.
It's just such an honor to have her on our team.
She's going to close us out this morning and provide with us some
next steps.
Let's welcome Brenda.
(applause)
Brenda Mitchell: Good morning, everybody.
This is for tall people.
(laughter)
I'm going to step around to the side.
I'm really excited that we're at this point.
I thank Joshua for his entrusting so much of this
work to our office as Mara had to go on to other work.
I told her this morning I just kind of felt like a midwife
because she really gave birth to get this work off the ground and
we got to bring it together with your presence today.
One of the things Joshua didn't mention is that I
taught elementary school.
Joshua DuBois: The folks can hear.
You need to use the mic.
Brenda Mitchell: Oh. One of the things that I -- can you all -- do you all know
how to make this?
Oh, here.
All right, we'll make it go down for the next one.
One of the things that he didn't mention was that I
taught elementary.
I taught first and second grade.
For a little while I taught fourth, fifth and sixth.
And I realized that my children taught me as much, if not more,
than I taught them.
And there was an exercise that I would do with them
and their parents.
And I would ask this one question.
And I've revised it over the years but I'm going to ask this
one question and I'll look for a volunteer to answer it: What can
you find in common with an egg, a peanut, a seed,
and a caterpillar?
Are you smarter than a fifth grader?
Anybody?
(laughter)
Anybody? Nobody?
Yes -- oh, Mara, you can't answer!
Yes, ma'am.
Speaker: They all have a shell they come out of.
Brenda Mitchell: Oh, that's interesting.
Well, parents would say things like they're small.
They have potential.
They're things that grow.
And my favorite answer from children was,
what you see is not what you get.
(laughter)
Things are going to change.
It's going to get bigger.
It's going to be more than it is now.
And those were little children.
And so today I just say as I looked at this audience,
that question came to me and as I look at your plans I saw seeds
and I saw peanuts, and I saw eggs, and I saw caterpillars.
And I know that great things are about to happen as we try
to transform the way we use our beliefs to work together for the
common good.
And so our job is to just stay connected with you and
throughout the day we're going to learn as much, if not more,
from you.
So as you go to George Washington for your workshops,
please, please, be open, share with us.
There is nothing you can tell us that we won't learn
something from.
So don't, you know, keep your questions to yourself.
If you don't have time to ask them, write them down.
Give them to us.
And know that we're going to shape some things together.
Some of the most serious questions we've had recently are
around the next steps, how are we going to evaluate and so in
your workshop you will receive a draft evaluation template.
And you will get to give us feedback on that.
One of the most common questions we got as we were getting you to
put your plans together was, August?
You want us to work on a plan in May?
Do you realize it's commencement?
What are you people thinking?
Washington in August?
So you get to help us make sure we do some better stuff on this.
(laughter)
So, please give us, please give us your input.
And then you will receive, when you get to George Washington,
you will receive a name badge, you will also be able to pick
up a copy the most frequent question this morning was what
are the other schools, who's here today.
Who all has signed up.
So that will be available on the website.
But we decided since we got that question so many times this week
to give you a hard copy of that.
You have directions.
There will be interns outside to help guide
you to get over to G.W.
For those of you who want to walk,
you're just a half a mile away.
You can get in a cab and be there probably in a half hour
because even though it's only a half a mile they're going to
take the long way around.
(laughter)
You can go to the Metro.
You walk three blocks to the Metro,
you walk three blocks from the Metro,
so if you feel like walking you just want to walk.
So we're going to have people to help guide you with that.
There this afternoon -- let me acknowledge Terri Reed who is
the Vice Provost -- please stand,
Terri -- she is the Vice Provost at George Washington University,
and George Washington has opened its campus to us today because
there is another group coming in here in a few minutes.
(applause)
And I was telling her one of my biggest worries was that people,
we had to move people around and then they're going to have to
walk from one building to another on campus.
And then somebody said to me, Brenda, that's what we do!
(laughter)
We're college folk, we're institution people,
we know about that.
So we thank her for representing the school today and for George
Washington for the gracious way that they have supported us in
pulling today's activities together.
And so if you have questions about how to get where you want
to go, look at somebody out there that looks confident --
(laughter)
-- and they'll help you get there.
At the plenary, the plenary will start,
where all of the people will come together at
3:15 in Lisner Auditorium.
But you don't want to wait until 3:15.
Get there by 5 of 3, because G.W. students are going to be
doing very special performances before we kick off the program
this afternoon.
We look forward to being with you today.
We thank God for each and every one of you putting your hearts
in this and knowing that your words will become action and
together we really can transform the way America sees itself as
global citizens.
Thank you so much.
God bless you; we'll see you on the other side.
(applause)