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July 21, 2024At our upcoming 2024 Dare to Understand® Awards Ceremony, we’re celebrating the nearly 1000 past participants of our Walking the Walk® Youth Initiative. As we reach out to these alumni, many are sharing how their experiences in the program have helped them as adults living and working in an interfaith society. In this article, we hear from an alumna, Katie Rockford, and a mentor, Maha Attia.
I am a Walking the Walk alumna who participated for four years, two of which I was a student group leader. Growing up in an interfaith family inspired me to take part in Walking the Walk®. I always wanted to learn more about people from various religions and backgrounds and find commonalities, while simultaneously embracing differences.
Some of my favorite memories were when we came together as a group to volunteer at Inglis House, a long-term care community for individuals with disabilities. Not only were we able to have conversations about how volunteering and charity are important to our own faith traditions, but we were also able to give back to the local community and foster deeper connections among our group and Inglis House residents. I also really enjoyed the Sharing of Meaningful Objects activity as I got to learn not only what objects are important to different faith traditions, but also how objects can connect individuals to their own spirituality or faith tradition.
My experiences from Walking the Walk® have continued to influence my life today as I am a Religious Studies minor and a member of my college’s All Beliefs Union, which meets every other week for interfaith dialogue over dinner. Interfaith dialogue is very important to me and I am very grateful for the experiences and dialogue skills I have gained from Walking the Walk® and still use today.
As an immigrant to America, it was difficult to find a community outside of my family and other Egyptians like me. I was also worried about Islamophobia since I wear a Hijab and being Muslim in America. I wanted a chance to convince people that Islam is a peaceful religion that shares many things with other religions and is not something to be afraid of.
Walking the Walk® allowed me to be able to share my experiences with others which were helpful to better understand my own personal experiences and feelings. I was able to meet many new people of different faiths and learn the ways that we all connect and the challenges we all face. It was great to connect with others and it allowed me to learn how to share ideas and learn from others who I might not have known otherwise.
It also offered me a chance to find my voice and become better at being open with others and made me open my mind to new perspectives and points of view about something I had understood in one way my whole life—faith. I was able to give back to my community through service while at the same time gaining an understanding of that community at a deeper level. This made the work feel more meaningful and made me realize the importance of sharing stories and experiences.
