The Interfaith Center of New York through the Catholic-Muslim Joint Action Initiative from 2010-2015 has worked to support social services providers and community-based organizations from diverse backgrounds. This program not only fostered understanding between Muslim and Catholic communities, it strengthened the fabric of New York City by supporting vital interfaith initiatives youth programs and joint advocacy. From hunger issues in the Bronx, to immigration in Manhattan, and foster care concerns in Brooklyn, Muslim and Catholic communities worked together across faith lines to solve social problems. As partners addressed communities’ needs, they also developed and deepened relationships with one another. From this initiative projects were generated and a knowledge base was achieved that far exceeded our expectations. Par excellence examples of our Catholic-Muslim best practices are distilled in the How to Move From Dialogue to Action: Interfaith Social Action Partnerships manual and a more exhaustive chronicling of efforts in the longer report. Importantly, these from our partnerships learnings are translatable to other contexts beyond the Muslim-Catholic experiences from which they germinated. This program was made possible with a generous grant from the Gerald A. and Henrietta Rauenhorst Foundation.
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