A Year of Progress Through Partnerships

Cross posted from the White House blog here

In a commitment to advancing opportunity for all Americans, the President pledged that 2014 would be a year of action. He has spent the last 12 months working with Congress where he could, and taking action on his own where needed to revitalize the economy. He also worked closely with leaders from businesses, nonprofits, education, and communities to expand opportunity for more American families. These efforts have helped to create jobs, provide more Americans with high-quality education, promote new sources of energy, and protect the environment.

To help advance this work, the Administration has formed partnerships with faith-based and community organizations. Most Americans have ties to at least one faith or community organization, and they frequently turn to these organizations when they need help. Faith-based and community groups are often uniquely positioned to match people with the benefits, services, and protections they need. Sometimes these connections make the difference between a life of struggle and one of success.

Today, we are publishing a report that highlights a few of these kinds of partnerships as well as others that advance Administration priorities across the nation and around the globe.

A critical function of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships is to coordinate Centers for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships across 12 federal agencies. Each Center works with faith and neighborhood organizations on specific challenges to transform communities and change lives. The close of the year provides a timely opportunity to highlight some of this work.

As we end this year and look to the next, we remember President Obama’s charge:

Instead of driving us apart, our varied beliefs can bring us together to feed the hungry and comfort the afflicted; to make peace where there is strife and rebuild what has broken; to lift up those who have fallen on hard times. This is not only our call as people of faith, but our duty as citizens of America, and it will be the purpose of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Thanks to our many partners for the opportunity to work with you on achieving these goals. With your help, we are truly becoming a more perfect nation.

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Melissa Rogers is the Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Kicking Off the Fourth Annual Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge

Cross posted from the White House blog here

Acting on a recommendation by the first Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships,President Obama established the Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge to build bridges of understanding across our differences, especially among rising leaders, and to serve our neighbors. Interfaith service involves people from different religious and non-religious backgrounds tackling community challenges together – for example, Protestants and Catholics, Hindus and Jews, and Muslims and non-believers – building a Habitat for Humanity house together. Interfaith service impacts specific community challenges, while building social capital and civility.

This week, the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, Department of Education, and Corporation for National and Community Service hosted a gathering to kick off the President’s Fourth Annual Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge. More than 500 college students, chaplains, faculty, and administrators – including over 50 college presidents – participated in the two-day event.

The Challenge has grown by leaps and bounds since 2011 when President Obama first encouraged college presidents to establish or expand programs in interfaith and community service. Currently, more than 400 institutions of higher education participate in the Challenge.

The national gathering this week began with Cecilia Muñoz, Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, welcoming college presidents and supporters. It concluded with remarks by Treasury Secretary and former member of the CNCS Board of Directors, Jack Lew, and a showing of the award-winning film, Of Many, which follows the friendship and interfaith partnership of New York University’s Imam Khalid Latif and Rabbi Yehuda Sarna. These two sessions bookended a series of fascinating panel discussions, presentations, and community conversations involving a diverse array of academics, students, advocates, governmental officials, and think tank scholars.

A new step forward for the Challenge this year was the fact that recognition for interfaith community service was included in the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll. The Honor Roll, launched in 2006, annually highlights the role colleges and universities play in solving community problems and placing more students on a lifelong path of civic engagement by recognizing institutions that achieve meaningful, measureable outcomes in the communities they serve. The President’s Honor Roll now recognizes higher education institutions in four categories: General Community Service, Interfaith Community Service, Economic Opportunity, and Education. Also for the first time this year, a school was selected as a winner of a Presidential Award for Interfaith Community Service. That honor went to Loras College, a Catholic affiliated school in Dubuque, Iowa. One of the school’s many achievements is partnering with the AmeriCorps VISTA program to recruit and retain volunteers to tackle a range of challenges. This year and every year, the Campus Challenge demonstrates President Obama’s longstanding commitment to expanding and supporting national service, which he recently highlighted at the White House’s 20th Anniversary of AmeriCorps celebration.

Thanks to all who make the goals of interfaith and community service a priority, and a very special thanks to the Department of Education’s Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships for its leadership in planning and organizing this week’s event. We are excited about future of the Challenge.

If you’d like to learn more about the President’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge, contact the Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the Department of Education at EdPartners@ed.gov.

 

Rev. Brenda Girton-Mitchell, Secretary Arne Duncan, Wendy Spencer, and Melissa Rogers present Loras College a Presidential Award for Interfaith Community Service through the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll at George Washington University.

Rev. Brenda Girton-Mitchell, Secretary Arne Duncan, Wendy Spencer, and Melissa Rogers present Loras College a Presidential Award for Interfaith Community Service through the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll at George Washington University.

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Melissa Rogers is the Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.