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Why are you, the founders, starting the group?
The purpose of Interfaith@MIT is to catalyze relationships between religious groups on campus and to invite the MIT community to take notice and take part in activities that reach across cultural, intellectual and religious bounds. Specifically, Interfaith strives towards the following goals:
- Interfaith Catalyst
*: To bring religious or belief groups on campus together, two at a time, to deepen understanding and cultivate respect at both the religious and personal level; to involve the MIT community in casual activities on campus between peoples of different beliefs; to promote interfaith and faith-specific events on campus and encourage attendance from all belief groups.
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Additionally, we plan on regular events that highlight a religious group on campus. In a brief (one 1/2 hour) presentation accompanied with lunch, one religious group is given the time to talk about the basic tenets of their beliefs and showcase their religion in any way they feel is necessary. This could range from a worship demonstration to a deeper discussion on more confusing aspects of the faith. The purpose of these events are to give basic understanding of different faiths and to demonstrate the diverse peoples MIT has on her campus.
Lastly, we plan on bringing MIT's religious organizations and students together through collaborative community service. We plan on organizing regular projects or service trips to foster fraternity between students of different religions, based on the following idea:
Wiki Markup
Who is the intended audience of the group?
The intended audience of the group is any and all members of the MIT community, but targeting those that are involved in their respective religious organizations on campus. The MIT collective outside of these groups, however, is highly encouraged to join and diversify the depth of our understanding and the breadth of our community.
How do you plan to recruit new members?
We plan to recruit new members through (a) asking religious organizations to advertise within their group, (b) attending religious services or text studies to introduce ourselves and invite people to join, (c) sending out emails for our general body meetings to dorm lists and religious announce lists, (d) distributing posters around the campus, and (e) by setting up a booth at the ASA Activities Midways throughout the year to encourage new members.
How large do you expect the group to become? Why?
We hope to include as many people as are interested in religion and interfaith activities in the MIT community. We expect to start off relatively small, but increase in membership as we talk to more people, and as we involve more religious groups on campus in our interfaith activities. We hope to become a group of ~50 members not counting the belief groups on campus that are involved regularly in our events.
What has already been accomplished?
We have already written our constitution and voted on preliminary leadership. We have 14 enthusiastic members who are excited to begin and truly believe in the interfaith cause. We have a wiki on wikis.mit.edu that is open to viewership and will hold our first few announcements and events before we put together a website on scripts.mit.edu. We are working on organizing our first Faith Focus and our first interfaith dinner for Fall 2011, and developing our logo and flyers for publicity.