For a quarter of a century the SFIC has hosted and coordinated the City's Interfaith Winter Shelter. This effort provides dinner, breakfast and a safe, warm overnight rest for up to 110 homeless men each night. Four host congregations, 40 meal providing congregations, staff provided by Episcopal Community Services and the San Francisco Night Ministry, along with help from the City's Human Services Agency, enable the shelter to operate from the Sunday before Thanksgiving through the end of February.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Observance and Interfaith Service
For half a decade, in what is quickly becoming a San Francisco tradition, the SFIC has assumed primary responsibility for organizing the City's annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day observance. Our role is to coordinate the annual march over the Lefty O'Doul Bridge, which brings together "freedom riders" from the South Bay as well as those who gather from the City at the Caltrain Terminal. This march to the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial at Yerba Buena Gardens (YBG) pays tribute to and is symbolic of the 1965 crossing made by Dr. King over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Upon arrival at YBG, the estimated 10,000 attendees are led by the SFIC in a moving Interfaith Service. Key civic and noted dignitaries are in attendance.
Biennial Disaster Preparedness Workshop for Congregations
On April 30, 2014, at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption, the SFIC hosted the 5th Biennial Disaster Preparedness Workshop for Congregations. Past workshops have focused exclusively on the faith community's response to catastrophic disasters. This year's theme, "Congregations Responding to Everyday Disasters," examined the role of the faith community in responding to the needs of those impacted by fires, floods and other regularly occurring crises. Our partners in this important event were the SF Department of Emergency Management, the SF Police and Fire Departments, the SF Human Services Agency, the American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter, SF CARD and The San Francisco Foundation.
WinterFaith Shelter Walk
Each year the SFIC hosts a walk for hunger around Lake Merced. Proceeds from the walk are used to help defray the rising cost of operating the Interfaith Winter Shelter. This year's WinterFaith Shelter Walk was held on May 4, 2014, and raised over $14,000 for the shelter. Picture perfect weather, 13 teams, 100 walkers and over 20 volunteers contributed to the success of the day!
Annual "Bike to Worship" Week
The SFIC partnered with the SF Bicycle Coalition to promote "Bike to Worship 2014," an opportunity that encouraged congregants to pedal to their primary worship services from May 25 - June 1, 2014. Employing its vast communications network, the SFIC helped to spread the word, share the free "BIKE TO WORSHIP Toolkit" and helped to enlist registrants.
Annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Prayer Breakfast
Our major event of the year is the SFIC Annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Prayer Breakfast, attended by 400 people on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving Day. Each year we shine the spotlight on a contribution of the faith community to the life of San Francisco. In 2013 we honored "Swords to Plowshares" as well as congregations, agencies and educational institutions assisting current and returning veterans and their families in the challenges they face transitioning to life in our City. We honored the late Walter Newman for his tireless efforts to catalyze the Vets to College program at City College of San Francisco. Our keynote speaker was Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Legislative Affairs of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Joan M. Mooney. At the 17th Annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Prayer Breakfast on Tuesday, November 25, 2014, the SFIC will be "Celebrating 25 Years of Faith-Based Collaboration: Together We Can Do More!"
Annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Day Service
Each year, the SFIC sponsors San Francisco's only Interfaith Thanksgiving Day Service bringing together faith leaders and congregants from the rich diversity of our City for prayer and thanksgiving. The 9th Annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Day Service was hosted last year at the Buddhist Church of San Francisco. This year's host for the 10th Annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Day Service will be Congregation Sherith Israel. At that service an offering is collected to offset the rising cost of the San Francisco Interfaith Winter Shelter.
Annual Interfaith World AIDS Day Service
For the past several years, the SFIC has collaborated with St. Mark's Lutheran Church in co-hosting the City's only Interfaith World AIDS Day Service. Last year's service included important testimonies from an emerging young adult network calling themselves "3rd Space," a medical researcher noted for his groundbreaking research at UCSF Medical Center, and performers from the homeless community called "Singers of the Street." This year's observance will take place on the eve of World AIDS Day, Sunday, November 30, 2014 at St. Mark's Lutheran Church.
Annual Interfaith Memorial for the Homeless Dead
Collaborating with the SF Night Ministry, the SFIC co-hosted the "Annual Interfaith Memorial for the Homeless Dead." This moving observance took place on the evening of December 19, 2013 at the Civic Center. In addition to prayers for the dead offered by religious and civic leaders of many faith traditions, a solemn reading of the names of the homeless who died in the past year was offered. This year's observance will take place on Thursday evening, December 18, 2014.
Annual Interfaith Calendar
Interfaith harmony begins with mutual understanding and respect among faiths. Each year the SFIC produces and distributes a calendar that lists religious holidays of the major world religions. The calendar is useful in scheduling being done by the San Francisco Unified School District, the Schools of the SF Archdiocese, various agencies of City government and the Consular Corps. This invaluable resource has sensitized these agencies and organizations to important religious observances and helped them avoid potential conflicts when scheduling events.
Convener of Faith-Based Social Service Agencies ("CEO Roundtable")
For the past five years the SFIC has assumed the role of "convener" of the CEOs of the ten major faith-based social service agencies to address issues of common concern. The SFIC not only has provided these important leaders an arena for professional collaboration, but also, was instrumental in facilitating an important editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle that brought attention to the correlation of rising rents and nonprofit displacement in our City and the ultimate impact on social service agency clients. What followed was the convening of a series of meetings of the CEOs with key governmental, media and tech leaders and the inclusion of our constituents on a City Nonprofit Displacement Taskforce. The SFIC was also invited as a stakeholder to an important Roundtable called by the Mayor to better relations between the tech and nonprofit communities. The City is also engaging the CEO Roundtable on the issue of potential services for undocumented minors arriving in our "Sanctuary City."
SPECIAL PROGRAMS
Collaboration with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA)
As San Francisco braces itself for a significant increase in residential and corporate building, the impact these new structures and their inhabitants will have upon our City's transit infrastructure is a growing concern. The San Francisco Municipal Transporation Agency (SFMTA) has asked the SFIC to convene congregation leaders of the houses of worship in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood to undertake a study of how their congregants get to worship. At the heart of this effort is a survey that will track multimodal transit patterns. The results of this investigation will allow development of pilot programs to encourage and incentivize congregants to take alternative methods of transportation to worship. If successful, this public/private collaboration will be replicated in other key San Francisco neighborhoods. The SFIC is also working with the SFMTA and Board of Supervisor staff to convene neighborhood conversations of congregation leaders, residents and business owners to address weekend parking challenges in vulnerable neighborhoods.
Essential Housing Initiative
In its role as convener, the SFIC effectively brings together prominent faith leaders of judicatories that are headquartered in San Francisco, but serve broader geographic regions. A common concern of these religious leaders is the need for a united voice to speak out on the immorality of our nation's growing income gap. In a recent unprecedented gathering, these religious leaders, together with the CEOs of San Francisco's major faith-based social service agencies, viewed a segment of Robert Reich's informative documentary, "Inequality For All," heard a panel discussion and engaged in constructive conversation on the issue. This important gathering resulted in these key leaders committing to a unified advocacy strategy on the issue of essential housing in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area.
Islamophobia
Recipients of the ONE NATION BAY AREA MINI-GRANTS (a collaboration of the San Francisco Foundation, Marin Community Foundation, Silicon Valley Foundation, Asia Pacific Foundation and Russell Foundation) for two consecutive years, the SFIC held seven dinner conversations to sensitize non-Muslims to the realities and challenges faced by American Muslims. The purpose of these dinner conversations was to directly address the phenomenon of "Islamophobia." Those well attended convenings included key faith and thought leaders of the Abrahaic traditions, who shed light on their respective faiths' perspectives, experiences and teachings on education, gender issues, immigration, racial profiling, media influence on public perception of religion, and observant versus nominal adherents. The final gathering featured a screening of the documentary, "An American Mosque," followed by a robust panel discussion that included the filmmaker and lawyers from Muslim Advocates, whose chief work is to represent Muslim victims of racial profiling and to call out those who perpetrate such practices.
In addition, the SFIC, in partnership with United Religions Initiative (URI), utilized its vast social media network of 3,600 e-subscribers, to disseminate a toolkit to congregation leaders as a resource to combat Islamophobia in their respective faith communities. The SFIC also participated in URI's "Talking Back to Hate Campaign," a successor program, of which a key component was Islamophobia.
On October 17, 2014, the San Francisco Chronicle published an OPEN FORUM on religious intolerance entitled "Decry Muni Bus Ads on Islam," co-signed by SFIC Executive Director, Michael G. Pappas and Jewish Community Relations Council Associate Executive Director, Abby Michelson Porth. In addition to responding to anti-Muslim ads being run on SFMTA buses, this work also incorporated themes from recently issued SFIC statements on anti-Semitism and the antithetical teachings of the Islamic State group.
Commonwealth Club of California
The SFIC's Executive Director is periodically called upon to moderate presentations at the Commonwealth Club of California's Middle East Forum. On February 14, 2014, SFIC Executive Director Michael Pappas, moderated a presentation entitled "Democracy in the Muslim World" that featured the President of the Alliance for Shared Values, Alp Aslandogan. This particular presentation considered how the Turkish experience could be a guide to emerging democracies in the Middle East.
1st Annual Interfaith Town Hall
With growing concern for the well-being of those incarcerated in our City Jail, as well as for the transition of the anticipated mass of those re-entering society, as the result of the passage of important legislation, the SFIC partnered with the Sheriff's Department to co-host the "1st Annual Interfaith Town Hall." Attended by over 80 faith leaders, this forum addressed issues of clergy access to the jails, programs for inmates and re-entry transition programs. A follow-up orientation workshop for participants on specific policies and programs is anticipated in the coming months.
Gun Buy-Back Program
The SFIC collaborated with the City and County of San Francisco and the Ingleside Community Policy Advisory Board in promoting a highly successful GUN BUY-BACK program. This program, part of a broader initiative to curb gun violence in our City, took place on two Saturdays - April 5, 2014 and November 1, 2014. With guaranteed anonymity, gun owners were invited to drive up and leave unloaded firearms in working condition in the trunks of their cars. In return, they received $100.00 for firearms and $200.00 for assault weapons. The results of these safe and community-based events was the collection of hundreds of firearms, including assault weapons.
Pathways to Citizenship
The SFIC was invited to partner with the SF Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs and the US Department of Homeland Security's US Citizenship & Immigration Services' San Francisco District Office in co-hosting the upcoming December 6, 2014, San Francisco "Pathways to Citizenship Workshop." As trusted stakeholders, clergy are in the unique position to help identify and inform eligible candidates of this program. This series of workshops is designed to fast track such candidates by providing free citizenship consultation and fee waiver assistance. In addition to providing notice of the workshop through the SFIC list serve and devoting the SFIC October 2014 Monthly Breakfast to briefing congregation leaders on the program, the SFIC was instrumental in securing the University of San Francisco as a host venue and is working to enlist volunteers for the event.
Children at the Border
Communities of faith have historically taken a central leadership role in assisting immigrants fleeing persecution from their countries of origin. Arguably, it was the faith community's efforts in offering refuge to Central American political asylum seekers that led to San Francisco becoming a Sanctuary City. In attempting to offer a welcome to the countless undocumented minors from Central America crossing the border, the City reached out to the SFIC to engage its constituent congregations, judicatories and faith-based social service agencies to provide services and assistance. In response, the SFIC facilitated a highly constructive briefing by the City's primary coordinator/strategist on this issue, at which faith-based social service agency directors, foundation funders and others engaged in interfaith immigration efforts responded with their firsthand perspectives as well as the services they are offering these young clients. The SFIC reaffirms its commitment to this public/private collaboration as developments unfold.
Interfaith Concert
Song is a metaphor that artistically expressed the possibility for harmonious peace. As part of the SFIC's 25th Anniversary Celebration, a concert was held at the historic First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Franciscon on Sunday, November 9, 2014. In addition to a musical presentation by the host congregation's choir, works were performed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; a Buddhist singer; St. Dominic's Schola Cantorum; Taneen Sufi Music Ensemble; Kol Emanu-El Choir complemented by the congregation's Cantor Roslyn Barak; and the Providence Baptist Church Choir.
Concluding Thoughts
Because of the important stakeholder role the SFIC plays in these many arenas, the SFIC has been invited to take a place at many tables. SFIC Executive Director, Michael Pappas, currently brings the SFIC's voice and presence to those tables through his membership on the SF Human Rights Commission, the SF Disaster Council, American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter Board of Directors and The San Francisco Foundation FAITHS Program Advisory Board.
This narrative represents only a part of our work. We have been able to do all this with just two full time staff persons (our Executive Director, Michael Pappas and Program/Administra- tive Associate, Cynthia Zamboukos), an intern from the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, the tireless volunteer efforts of our Past Chair, Rita R. Semel, and others.
The funding provided by congregations, judicatories, agencies, individuals and foundations has made these important achievements possible.
