Interfaith Grand River
AGM
14 Nov. 2024
Report from the Steering Committee
by Jay Moore, President of IGR
In the past 13 months, the Steering Committee has engaged in the work of building interfaith strength. Some of the work is what the organization has been doing for many years and some of it is new and innovative.
Our meeting in October of 2023 was very significant and demonstrated the usefulness of IGR to the community. We invited everyone to express their feelings about the war in Gaza. We were compassionate and respectful as we approached this very volatile subject with open hearts. We raised our degree of trust among us to a whole new level. A month later, in November, many reported the significance and the value of the experience. We affirmed to ourselves that interfaith action has an important role in the healing of people hurt by conflicts like the war in Gaza.
In January of 2024, thanks to August Adelman, our Secretary, we published our first monthly newsletter and got the blog up and running where information about community events related to our work is published. Mike Morrice, the MP from the Green Party, representing Kitchener in Ottawa, spoke to us about the problem of homelessness and there was significant dialogue with him about the problem.
On January 14th, the Steering Committee had an all day retreat to help build our new leadership team and begin to consolidate our plans for the future.
In April we began some early discussions about becoming a charitable organization. We plan to continue those discussions and make some decisions about that strategy soon.
May 2024 brought us the Interfaith Community Breakfast which involved Sandy and Michael from IGR who are on the Breakfast Committee. Since then, we have had discussions about the relationship between the two “sister” groups, IGR and the Breakfast Committee. We will continue to search for ways to connect and co-operate in a more unified way in the future.
In June we had a table at a Community Information Fair held at Doon Public School for students and their parents. It was good to see how we could become more visible in the community in a new way. We will look for more opportunities like that one. Also in June, we had our usual booth at the Multicultural Festival in Victoria Park and spoke with interested citizens about our work over the two day festival.
In September we were invited to host one of the monthly movie nights at WLU and this will take place soon. We see this as an opportunity to be visible at the university among the students and faculty and search for ways to build more new relationships there. Also in September, Brice Balmer facilitated all the paperwork details to submit the nomination of Darrol Bryant for the King Charles III Coronation Medal for all the work he has accomplished in a lifetime for the cause of Interfaith. His story is an amazing one and we are fortunate that he was active in our own Interfaith Grand River for many years. We have yet to hear if the nomination has been accepted.
And finally, in October, IGR sent a letter to Premier Ford about the closure of the Safe Consumption Site in Kitchener and we published it widely. Since then, three local radio outlets have completed interviews about our letter – 570 News, The Mike Farwell Show on 570 Radio and the local CBC morning show hosted by Craig Norris. Our spokesperson was Brice Balmer who is most aware of the details surrounding the consequences of this closure. We continue to be most grateful for Brice’s expertise, experience and willingness to commit to social justice for Interfaith Grand River.
Throughout the year, we have continued with the “Believe It or Not” videos on our Youtube channel where members of our community describe their personal faith journeys. Many thanks to Jan Hansen and August Adelman who have put in the work to complete 28 video interviews, all available online to the public. The number of views for these interviews is in the range of 36,000 views! We hope to continue to use social media in this way and other ways to raise our visibility in Waterloo Region and beyond.
Also, during this year, we have experimented with having evening meetings. The intention was to provide opportunities for those who were working during to day (usually younger people) to attend our meetings. At this point, we can’t say that it has been a roaring success. We need to take another look.
To do just that, we have created a survey tool that we are announcing today will go out to all those on our mailing list in a couple of weeks time. Not only do we want to know what members and other participants think about evening meetings, we will also have a number of question about other matters that a Steering Committee must be concerned with. This survey will initiate a process to examine what IGR is doing well and what we can change to improve our performance. You will be receiving more information about the survey soon.
Jay Moore
President, Interfaith Grand River
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