Utsav Ghandi didn’t know that Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who devours news cycles like a land-locked tiger shark, recently created an Office of New Americans. It elicited scant interest in the local press, but the young immigrant’s counsel is succinct.
“Focus on those 12 to, say, 19 years old, the age when they may be most confused about a new world of America,” said Ghandi, 19, a chemical engineering student at Illinois Institute of Technology, who arrived a year ago from Mumbai.
He’s worth hearing out due to his newbie status and involvement in a meritorious project aimed at improving understanding among various faiths and cultures, with a focus on the Chicago metro area’s Muslim community, estimated at 400,000, which some say is the nation’s largest.
One Chicago, One Nation is the product of a post-9/11 endeavor called One Nation, largely financed by $200,000 from George F. Russell Jr., of Tacoma, Wash., who founded the investment-services firm best known for the Russell 2000 stock index. His aim was to create positive images of a much-caricatured and maligned Muslim population in the United States.
The project here started last year and is led by two locally-based groups, the Interfaith Youth Core and Inner-City Muslim Action Network, which partnered with several other funders, including The Chicago Community Trust. (The Chicago Community Trust has contributed to the Chicago News Cooperative.) If City Hall’s new office is more than a politically correct nod to new immigrants, it should rely on both.
Ghandi was one of several dozen “community ambassadors” who went through training and oversaw separate interfaith events as part of One Chicago, One Nation. There was, too, the prospect of a second grant to those projects deemed worthy of expansion.
Ghandi, a member of the Jain faith, partnered with Mohini Lal, a Texas native and Hindu student at Shimer College, a neighbor of IIT, to run a day of community service at the Benton House community center in the Bridgeport neighborhood. A diverse group of 120 ran a food drive, painted a gardening shed and created an organic garden, while also just having fun during a slam poetry contest and other performances.
In a small way, he believes, it improved understanding among the participants. It came as he was reading up on Islamic history. “We need more institutions to stimulate positive discussion, not misplaced beliefs, and help stamp out prejudices we all have.”
He didn’t get a second, so-called entrepreneurship grant, though Tom LaClair, 25, a Syracuse, N.Y., native, did after running an interfaith youth soccer tournament in Lincoln Park.
Teams of Latinos, Tibetans and African-Americans competed initially, then were scrambled to play as mixed teams before they and family members enjoyed a multi-cultural buffet. A self-identified secular humanist, LaClair works at Urban Initiatives, which runs soccer programs for the Chicago Public Schools, and he’ll use his $5,000 second grant to conduct similar tournaments at least four times citywide.
“If you can play soccer with one another, you can be comfortable approaching those same people on the street,” he said. “If a project like this succeeds in one of the most segregated cities in the country, I do see it as a potential model elsewhere.”
In all, there have been about 40 individual interfaith social-action events under the One Chicago, One Nation umbrella. The projects receiving extra money should all be launched by summer’s end, with hope that current partners, notably One Nation and the Chicago Community Trust, will continue funding and that others will join.
The thrust remains promoting partnerships between Muslim and non-Muslim “community ambassadors,” a group ranging in age from 17 to 65 and representing nine religions, eight colleges and universities and 20 languages.
“People should pay attention since we’re not playing on neutral territory. There are a lot of folks out there propounding a thesis of division,” said Eboo Patel, an Indian-born Muslim and former Rhodes scholar who runs the Interfaith Youth Core and was a member of President Obama’s inaugural interfaith advisory panel.
He was back at the White House Wednesday for announcement of an interfaith service “challenge” for college campuses. It’s sort of an interfaith version of the “Race to the Top” contest for states’ schools and also run by the Department of Education, though the rewards are certificates of distinction, not many millions of dollars.
Money does talk but, when it comes to bigotry and caricature, mere talk is a worthy goal.
by JAMES WARREN | Aug 4, 2011
Utsav Ghandi didn’t know that Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who devours news cycles like a land-locked tiger shark, recently created an Office of New Americans. It elicited scant interest in the local press, but the young immigrant’s counsel is succinct.
“Focus on those 12 to, say, 19 years old, the age when they may be most confused about a new world of America,” said Ghandi, 19, a chemical engineering student at Illinois Institute of Technology, who arrived a year ago from Mumbai.
He’s worth hearing out due to his newbie status and involvement in a meritorious project aimed at improving understanding among various faiths and cultures, with a focus on the Chicago metro area’s Muslim community, estimated at 400,000, which some say is the nation’s largest.
One Chicago, One Nation is the product of a post-9/11 endeavor called One Nation, largely financed by $200,000 from George F. Russell Jr., of Tacoma, Wash., who founded the investment-services firm best known for the Russell 2000 stock index. His aim was to create positive images of a much-caricatured and maligned Muslim population in the United States.
The project here started last year and is led by two locally-based groups, the Interfaith Youth Core and Inner-City Muslim Action Network, which partnered with several other funders, including The Chicago Community Trust. (The Chicago Community Trust has contributed to the Chicago News Cooperative.) If City Hall’s new office is more than a politically correct nod to new immigrants, it should rely on both.
Ghandi was one of several dozen “community ambassadors” who went through training and oversaw separate interfaith events as part of One Chicago, One Nation. There was, too, the prospect of a second grant to those projects deemed worthy of expansion.
Ghandi, a member of the Jain faith, partnered with Mohini Lal, a Texas native and Hindu student at Shimer College, a neighbor of IIT, to run a day of community service at the Benton House community center in the Bridgeport neighborhood. A diverse group of 120 ran a food drive, painted a gardening shed and created an organic garden, while also just having fun during a slam poetry contest and other performances.
In a small way, he believes, it improved understanding among the participants. It came as he was reading up on Islamic history. “We need more institutions to stimulate positive discussion, not misplaced beliefs, and help stamp out prejudices we all have.”
He didn’t get a second, so-called entrepreneurship grant, though Tom LaClair, 25, a Syracuse, N.Y., native, did after running an interfaith youth soccer tournament in Lincoln Park.
Teams of Latinos, Tibetans and African-Americans competed initially, then were scrambled to play as mixed teams before they and family members enjoyed a multi-cultural buffet. A self-identified secular humanist, LaClair works at Urban Initiatives, which runs soccer programs for the Chicago Public Schools, and he’ll use his $5,000 second grant to conduct similar tournaments at least four times citywide.
“If you can play soccer with one another, you can be comfortable approaching those same people on the street,” he said. “If a project like this succeeds in one of the most segregated cities in the country, I do see it as a potential model elsewhere.”
In all, there have been about 40 individual interfaith social-action events under the One Chicago, One Nation umbrella. The projects receiving extra money should all be launched by summer’s end, with hope that current partners, notably One Nation and the Chicago Community Trust, will continue funding and that others will join.
The thrust remains promoting partnerships between Muslim and non-Muslim “community ambassadors,” a group ranging in age from 17 to 65 and representing nine religions, eight colleges and universities and 20 languages.
“People should pay attention since we’re not playing on neutral territory. There are a lot of folks out there propounding a thesis of division,” said Eboo Patel, an Indian-born Muslim and former Rhodes scholar who runs the Interfaith Youth Core and was a member of President Obama’s inaugural interfaith advisory panel.
He was back at the White House Wednesday for announcement of an interfaith service “challenge” for college campuses. It’s sort of an interfaith version of the “Race to the Top” contest for states’ schools and also run by the Department of Education, though the rewards are certificates of distinction, not many millions of dollars.
Money does talk but, when it comes to bigotry and caricature, mere talk is a worthy goal.