"Bridge-Builders Ceremony Recognizes Exemplary Interfaith Leaders"
 
Some of today’s most innovative leaders in interfaith cooperation were honored at the first ever Bridge-Builders Awards ceremony Monday night. Eboo Patel opened with a metaphor about building bridges, stating that “people build bridges… [they] take stones and put together a structure to cross over to the other side.”

Expanding on this theme, Rabbi David Saperstein offered an inspired and fiery keynote address, expressing his thrill to be a part of the ceremony to distinguish the “remarkably inspiring programs honored here tonight.”

The winners represent a wide variety of exemplary leaders in the arena of interfaith social entrepreneurship.

• The Bridge-Builders Movement Award was given to Abraham’s Vision for engaging young people around the difficult issue of Israel/Palestine.
• The Twin Cities Interfaith Youth Leadership Coalition accepted the Bridge-Builders Community Award for its commitment to organizing city-wide interfaith programming for high school youth in Minnesota.
• Bearea College, a Christian liberal arts college in Kentucky, accepted the Bridge-Builders Campus Award for prioritizing interfaith work on an institutional level.
• Joshua Stanton, a former IFYC Fellow, was honored with the Bridge-Builders Leadership Award for, among other things, his work on developing the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue.

Conference participants expressed their admiration for the honorees as models of interfaith leadership during the Bridge-Builders reception. “The words of leaders are of no worth unless there is positive action,” said Furqan Naeem of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies / Young Muslims UK, reflecting the action-oriented agendas modeled by the award winners.

It was a night of stirring words and inspiring examples of interfaith leaders that left participants fired up to get out into the world and act on their values. “You are changing the world. You may not see it, working as closely as you do… but I step back and take it all in, and I see it. Truly, you are changing the world,” said Rabbi Saperstein. “You and your work testify that we won’t be too late… Bless you for what you do.”
 
Chris Stedman
Outreach, Education and Training Intern
Candidate for Master of Arts in Religion
Meadville Lombard Theological School