Osher Life Long Learning Institute

Osher Life-long Learning Institute
A new course: "India: Culture, Traditions, and Gandhi"
has been developed for the members of the Osher Life-long Learning Institute (OLLI) of American University at the Gandhi Memorial Center from March to May 2009. This course will introduce participants to the arts and philosophy of India through lectures and demonstrations.

Gandhi Memorial Center
Phone: 301-320-6871
Fax: 301-229-7576
Email: info@gandhimemorialcenter.org
Web: http://www.gandhimemorialcenter.org/
Address: 4748 Western Avenue
Bethesda, MD 20816, USA

Internship Positions available from the CPWR

Academic year INTERNSHIP POSITIONS now open at

The Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions

Join the Council’s team by applying for one of our flexible
volunteer internships during the upcoming academic year.

Keep up with your schoolwork while building your résumé and
getting involved in the worldwide interreligious movement.

Set your own hours each week and work from home or in our downtown Chicago office on
research and outreach projects attuned to your personal and academic interests.

The Council is currently looking for student interns available to volunteer during the school year and/or summer, 2009, on projects related to publicizing our event, as well as researching and reaching out to communities across the globe and helping with office support.

* * *

Inspired by the Parliament of the World’s Religions held during the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the Council was created to cultivate harmony among the world's religious and spiritual communities and to foster their engagement with the world and its guiding institutions in order to achieve a just peaceful and sustainable world. To accomplish this, we connect and initiate dialogue among individuals and communities who are similarly invested in attaining this goal.

The Parliament of the World's Religions is the world's largest global interreligious event. Organized by the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions and hosted by Melbourne, Australia, the 2009 Parliament will bring together over 8,000 people from Australia and around the world, including renowned spiritual, religious and political leaders.

Visit us online and fill out an application at:
http://www.parliamentofreligions.org/
(Click on “Get Involved.”)
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Calling on Youth: Opportunities to Serve - The Faiths Act Fellowship

The Faiths Act Fellowship

Introduction
The Faiths Act Fellowship will bring together thirty young leaders aged between 18-25 drawn from the different faiths from the US, UK, and Canada to embark on a 10 month journey of interfaith service. The Tony Blair Faith Foundation has launched this initiative in conjunction with the Interfaith Youth Core, which aims to build relationships among young people from different religious traditions by empowering them to work together to serve others.

Interfaith Youth Core is the co-ordinating body for the Fellowship programme.

Training begins with a 2-month intensive initiative that includes fieldwork with primary health care partners fighting deaths from malaria in Africa. Fellows will return to their home countries for 8 months to mobilize young people of faith to raise awareness and resources to promote the Millennium Development Goals. They will focus particularly focus on fighting deaths from malaria.

Purpose of the Fellowship
Halting and reversing the spread of malaria is one of today’s most urgent moral challenges. 500 million people contract the disease each year and one million die, the vast majority under 5 years old and in Africa. Yet, malaria is preventable and treatable. And, progress in the fight against deaths from malaria will speed our achievement of 6 of the 8 Millennium Development Goals.
Young people of faith have a particular role to play in this vision. As change-makers for future generations, they are able to establish new forms of inter-faith collaboration by placing a committed concern for the poorest at the heart of a renewed dialogue of life and action. The Faiths Act Fellows will become ambassadors for inter-religious cooperation in the fight against deaths from malaria and the accomplishment of the Millennium Development Goals.
Once in their home countries, galvanising, motivating and organising across faith communities for the MDGs, we hope that the Fellows will reach 1,000 people each. This would mean over the programme, 30,000 across the world will have been touched by the programme and our objective is to spread the work ever wider.

Potential candidates
Candidates must have the potential to become accomplished leaders, and be able to demonstrate a firm commitment to work for justice in their own faith community. They will need to be able to commit a year of their life to this work as MDG ambassador, ten months of which will be hard work, travel, workshops, speaking engagements, presentations in a well-planned project devised by them in conjunction with the IFYC. They will receive a basic stipend, insurance cover and health care provision.
Candidates selected will work in interfaith pairs in their own faith communities based in host organisations in their countries. Inspired by their different religious traditions, they will motivate and equip young people in congregations, schools and university religious student groups to lead their faith communities in spreading awareness of the MDG challenge, raising life-saving funds for the fight against deaths from malaria and promoting a new inter-religious dialogue of life and action.

The programme
The programme will begin with induction first in London lasting two weeks from August 2009, then an educational exposure trip to a malaria hotspot in Africa. Fellows will learn and work in teams in selected African countries, hosted and guided by an organization that is doing excellent primary health care work. In Africa, they will learn about the realities of malaria and the urgency behind the Millennium Development Goals. Both in London and Africa, Fellows will have opportunities to explore the social and cultural life around them and particularly to interact with local faith communities.
On return they will receive further preparatory training in Chicago to equip them to perform effectively in their chosen projects. The rest of the programme will find them working in their local faith communities as interfaith pairs, mobilizing young people of faith to work together in raising awareness of the MDGs and funds for malaria eradication. They will be hosted by a local organization that does related work and will work as a team.

Host organisations
In their home countries, Fellows will be hosted by a local organization whose mission fits closely with this project. Host organizations in the UK include Muslim Aid, World Vision UK, Tzedek, and the Christian-Muslim Forum. We are now seeking host organizations in the US, and Canada. Interested organizations should submit an application (go to www.faithsactfellows.org).
In order to be eligible, the organization’s work must already prioritize interfaith social action or the engagement of faith communities in international development and have the human, physical and technological resources to host and manage two full-time Fellows from late September, 2009 through to late May, 2010.

Where Will Fellows Live?

Fellows will spend their first two months in training and staying in lodging that will be arranged by the programme. Following the training programme, Fellows will return to their home countries and must arrange housing within commuting distance of their host organization.

Fellows will be responsible for finding and paying for their own housing within commuting distance of their host organization. Some Fellows may be placed in their home city and not need to relocate, while others will need to relocate to a new city. As there will only be a few host organizations in each country and we need to ensure a strong fit between the Fellows and their host organizations as well as between the paired Fellows, we cannot guarantee that any Fellow will be able to live in their home city.

Will Fellows Get Paid?

Fellows will receive a modest living allowance, which will vary according to each placement city’s cost of living.

Contact: www.tonyblairfaithfoundation.org
+44 [0] 207 647 7880
P.O. Box 60519, London, Wz7JU, United Kingdom
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Desmond Tutu on Climate Change - Justice for the World's Poor

Desmond Tutu on Climate Change:

"If we act on the side of justice, we have the power to turn tides."

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=onSHD4sAuB4
3.24 mins
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Ban on Cluster Munitions -- A moral responsibility

Statement of the European Faith Leaders Conference on Cluster Munitions:

Total ban on cluster munitions - a moral responsibility

Leaders of Europe’s major religions, representing all parts of our continent, together with representatives from non-governmental organisations and supported by members of the diplomatic community met in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, on 29 and 30 October 2008 to address the burning issue of cluster munitions and to express our support for the process to ban these weapons.

The conference was organised by Religions for Peace, the European Council of Religious Leaders and Handicap International Southeast Europe. It was hosted by the Interreligious Council of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Religions for Peace has from its founding in 1970 had a deep commitment to work for nuclear disarmament. Related concerns about peaceful co-existence and prevention of violent conflicts have compelled Religions for Peace to adopt a wider disarmament agenda. As part of this effort, Religions for Peace is joining with the worldwide “Cluster Munitions Coalition” in calling for the end of the production, transfer, stockpiling, and use of cluster munitions.

The issue
Cluster munitions are non-discriminatory and have for more than 40 years killed and wounded innocent people – many of them children – causing untold suffering, loss and hardship for thousands in more than 20 countries. They continue to inflict injury and death for years – sometimes decades – after the end of a war. It is not peace when children cannot play safely in their playgrounds. It is not peace when farmers cannot cultivate their fields, nor fishermen draw their nets without fear. It is not peace when people cannot move freely in their local communities.

Cluster munitions thus keep large groups of people in poverty. The global food crisis increases pressure on people to cultivate areas affected by cluster munitions. The lingering threat of unexploded “bomblets” hampers post-conflict rebuilding and rehabilitation. The dangerous and costly work of clearance absorbs funds that could be spent on other urgent humanitarian needs. Cluster munitions are thus as much a humanitarian issue as it is a disarmament issue. Without determined action, the civilian harm caused by these weapons both during and after conflict will continue to grow.

Religious communities share the conviction that life is a gift of God. Thus dignity and sanctity of life is a value that is deeply held and widely shared by religious communities. This is strongly violated by cluster munitions. The use of cluster munitions is morally reprehensible. No self defence policy or just war theory can legitimate the use of these weapons. Vulnerability is a constituent element of being human. This vulnerability is a moral call to all of us to protect the other.

The Challenges
The conference found the following to be of the utmost importance:

Universalising the Convention on Cluster Munitions
• Governments need to sign the treaty and then to ratify without undue delay so the treaty can come into effect.
• There is a need to work with those governments which do not want to sign the treaty immediately and encourage them to take steps towards signing.
• There is a need for civil society including non-governmental organisations to continue to play their significant role in influencing public opinion and framing of policies in support of the convention.

Implementing the Convention on Cluster Munitions
• The Convention on Cluster Munitions is not effective unless states abide by its obligations. This includes clearance of contaminated areas as well as destruction of stockpiled cluster munitions.
• Countries that have used cluster munitions are responsible for clearing affected areas in the countries where they have used them.
• Affected populations should be educated about the dangers caused by unexploded bomblets in their environments.

Making survivor assistance a priority, nationally and internationally
• Survivor assistance refers to physical care and rehabilitation as well as to economic and social re-integration. The needs of survivors must be addressed through projects and actions including medical care, the building of appropriate infrastructures, educational programmes and assistance. The voice of survivors must be heard and their organisations should be included in these processes. The rights of survivors must be reflected in national and international development programmes and policies.
• It is especially incumbent on faith communities to offer victims and survivors spiritual support in the face of injury, trauma and loss, and in the struggle for recovery and re-inclusion in society.

Our commitment
Our faith traditions call us to stand with those who suffer, and to work together for the well-being of the human family based on our shared commitment to justice and peace.

As religious leaders from Europe’s major religions and representatives of all parts of our continent, we therefore:

• commit ourselves to take action, each in our own context, to support a ban on cluster munitions and to further the implementation of the treaty. We will urge our governments to take bold and committed steps, facilitate dialogue and take necessary action. We will work through our own faith communities to educate people on this issue and encourage them to be agents of change, working in solidarity with the survivors, their families and communities affected by the menace of cluster munitions. We encourage the organisers of this conference to continue to assist religious leaders in their efforts to take action for example through awareness raising, sharing of knowledge and experiences, and direct engagement with affected countries and communities.

• call upon leaders of faith in all religious communities to make their voices heard and to engage with their respective governments and make sure they fulfil their obligations as representatives of the people. We urge them to take leadership in their religious communities to provide spiritual care to those affected and to guide the people of faith and make them instruments for justice and peace.

• call upon European governments to ensure that cluster munitions are banned through signing the treaty, ratifying it, implementing it and contributing in the international work to clean up and dispose of cluster munitions, as well as supporting those affected.

We commend all those within civil society and among state actors who have worked hard to bring us to the point where a convention has been agreed. After the treaty is signed there is still a long way to go. We commit ourselves to continue to be part of this ongoing process for the total elimination of the curse of cluster munitions.

Sarajevo, 30 October 2008

European Council of Religious Leaders,
Office: Bernhard Getz' gate 3, Oslo.

Postal address: P O Box 6820 St. Olavs pl, NO-0130 Oslo. Norway.
Telephone +47 23 35 30 90.
E-mail: ecrl@rfp-europe.eu

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