URI Stories of Impact

Day 8: When Ambassador Mussie Hailu, URI Regional Director for Africa, started doing interfaith work in his home country of Ethiopia, there were no interfaith organizations in the country. Through his Interfaith Peacebuilding Initiative Cooperation Circle, he set out to change that.

Day 7: Francisco Morales Ventosa found his indigenous identity at 18; at 28, he found it again. After years of rejecting religion as the mark of colonization, he gained a newfound respect for faith of all kinds at a URI youth assembly in Mayapur, India. 

Day 6: In Badalona, a large suburb of Barcelona, the Associació UNESCO per al Diàleg Interreligiós Cooperation Circle (UNESCO Center of Catalonia) defused a simmering conflict between two groups of Gypsies.

Day 5: In Kauswagan, a village in the Philippine province of Lanao del Norte, Muslim worshippers leaving evening prayers on the final day of Ramadan were met by what in most places would be considered an unusual crowd: Christian villagers bearing flowers.

Day 4: The Women's Interfaith Network (WIN) of Sarasota, Florida successfully derailed a campaign by members of a local “Tea Party” organization to shelve a ninth grade history book that allegedly depicted Islam in a favorable light over other faiths. 

Over the last 20 years, more than 24,000 children were abducted from their villages in northern Uganda and sent to fight for the insurgent Lord’s Resistance Army or offered as brides to older soldiers.

Day 2: Two sects of the Syrian Christian Church in Kerala India reopened their churches and resumed peaceful worship this year after leaders of several Cooperation Circles in southern India helped negotiate a truce in a century-old conflict that was threatening to break out in a new round of violence. 

Day 3: On a Saturday in Ramadan, a month for giving and sharing, fifteen members from three Jordanian URI Cooperation Circles headed to Al Mafraq, 100km from the center of Amman, to distribute food.