Tim and Hafsa

Ashley Ciglar will be taking over the Faiths Act hub in the Bay Area with Laura Gengler after Tim and Hafsa finish their Fellowship year. 
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As our Fellowship comes to a close, we have really been thinking about the people we have met in the Bay Area and all of the great things we have learned out here. We have met fantastic interfaith leaders, like the San Francisco Interfaith Council and the Interfaith Center at the Presidio, who have really showed what wisdom 20 years in the business can bring. We have also been blessed to have been placed with the Islamic Networks Group, who have graciously invited us into their office space. 
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Last year, the UN reversed its support of DDT for use against disease-carrying mosquitoes. This is shortsighted. 
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How do we balance the seeming ease of eradication with the very real practicalities of protecting and treating affected populations? 
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34% of America's volunteers do so for religious organizations. But how many volunteer because of their faith at secular organizations? 
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"Slum tours" offer travelers an authentic, offbeat look at foreign cultures—and locals a new way to make a living. Really? 
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Every week, I listen to This American Life, a show about every day Americans. It is one my favourite shows, so imagine my surprise when I heard the word “malaria” pop up. My ears have lately been prone to pricking up that the syllable sounds of the word, and I instantly get my Faiths Act hat on in order to analyze. 
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Ever wanted to know what the Fellows are (really) up to? Here's the strategy. 
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Our holidays are our own – we celebrate in our churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues with our own family and friends. They are times for general homogeneity: a church is filled to the brim for Christmas mass, and Muslims crowd a local field for Eid-al-Adha prayer. But our holidays are also not our own. We decorate our homes with lights, some putting a menorah by the window for Chanukah, as passersby take in their beauty. We hear carols being sung or Christmas music on the radio stations. We come together to celebrate the end of one year and the beginning of the next. We share our holidays before we even know what it is that we are sharing.  
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What do religious buildings have to do with public health? Faith communities are more than the brick-and-mortar buildings that house them. 
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by: Hafsa Arain Thanksgiving is about as American as it gets. We get together with family, eat a lot of food, and conveniently forget our collective history about destroying nations and tribes of the native peoples of this land. 
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Today's guest blogger is Porsia Tunzi, who is originally from southern California, and is a sophomore at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California. She is a Resident Advisor, Peer Council member, and a student liaison between Mission and Ministry and the Center for Engaged Religious Pluralism. As a member of the Catholic tradition, she is also a firm believer in power and love of the interfaith youth movement. As of now, she plans to double major in Psychology and religion, with the hopes of attending graduate school after St. Mary’s. She is unsure of her future plans, but knows that they will involve creating a major positive impact on the world. These are her reflections from the Interfaith Youth Core 2009 Conference on Leadership in a Religiously Diverse World. 
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Malaria is very bad. It makes our lives difficult. 
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We cannot stand by and wait when it comes to something like malaria, which denies health, work, education, and hope to hundreds of millions of people.

 
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Written in London on August 2, 2009 as a part of the Fellows' training by Hafsa.

Conversations about fear and love are spattered throughout history.  They often stand, very much like we discussed at today’s training, as opposites of each other.  Fear is discussed as the motivator for contemporary violence.  Love, on the other hand, is harder to categorize; love is that which is most like faith and God.

 
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Written in Ifakara, Tanzania on August 17, 2009 by Hafsa as a part of the Faiths Act Fellows' training.

Life is always full of worries.  They plague the mind; they sharpen the senses.

As I sit here, I am worried about this Fellowship – whether I am succeeding or failing, or whether I can do either of those at the moment.

 
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Written in London on August 5, 2009 by Hafsa during the Faiths Act Fellowship training:

My grandmother is an illiterate, Pakistani woman.  By illiterate I mean that the only thing she knows how to read is the Arabic script of The Qur’an and The Qur’an alone.  She has no idea what it means when she speaks it.  I grew up sharing a bedroom with her when she lived in Hinsdale and Westmont, Illinois with us.

 
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Now, each year, I spend a few days during Ramadan fasting. I’m not a Muslim. Fasting for me happens during Lent (I am a Catholic). However, this was the first time that I’ve fasted during Ramadan around other Muslims.

 
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We’re all self-directed social entrepreneurs with a mission. We may be scattered around the world, but we know what we have to do. And even though we are separated by many miles and time zones, we are now starting our work. Together.

 
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The Faiths Act Fellows all come from very different religious traditions and different backgrounds, but we all have one goal: foster a new international coalition of churches, mosques, temples, governments, and NGOs to make the scourge of malaria a thing of the past.

 
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Tony Blair's speech meant a lot to us, not simply because he praised our dedication and passion, but because he expressed his humility towards the Fellows.

 
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After two weeks in London and three weeks in Tanzania, coming “home” means a lot to me.

 
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“The sheikh is my best friend,” shouts Father Mpinge. My site-partner Hafsa and I smile, too.

 
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Asma is sitting in front of me on a hospital bed holding her son Abdalla’s hand. He’s lying down, semi-conscious, with a chloroquine drip in his arm.

 
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In Tanzania I visited a room where technicians were breeding mosquitoes by the thousands.

 
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Rabbi Marcus paused and inhaled with great gravitas before saying, “Any religious community that did not engage in charitable work would find it very hard to justify its existence.”

 
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