What is the Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge?
According to a report at WhiteHouse.gov, the Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge serves the ultimate goal of President Obama to emphasize faith and community involvement as a means of building understanding between diverse communities and contributing to the common good. As the President said in his address when he announced this challenge, “For over 200 years, Americans of all faiths have come together, put their shoulders to the wheel of history, and made this country what it is today. And I know that as we go forward, it’s going to take all of us – Christian and Jew, Hindu and Muslim, believer and non-believer – to meet the challenges of the 21st century.”
- More college leaders may begin talking to one another about the importance of interfaith cooperation, which may result in the advancement of this work as an institutional priority
- As the diversity movement broadens, talk may move into the college classroom, engaging students and professors on an academic level
- Courses may be introduced to foster positive encounters between students of different faiths and non-believers to promote greater interfaith cooperation
- ·Religious diversity will become work that encompasses a greater portion of the college campus, engaging additional staff and a larger group of students
- Students will use their college campuses to demonstrate the power of interfaith cooperation, which may then move into the communities surrounding the college campuses
- Measurable changes may occur on a national level, as more college students who have had this background graduate and begin to take on leadership roles in their communities