In this one-hour webinar we will ask how faith communities can foster cogenerational innovation to create a better world and hear real-world examples of cogeneration in action within and across faith communities. Throughout the conversation, you'll hear from a panel of older and younger leaders and get a chance to ask questions. 

Meet Kerry Brodie, Founder of Emma’s Torch, a growing social enterprise that empowers refugees through culinary education. Inspired by the Holocaust survivors and immigrants in her own family, and concerned by the growing refugee crisis, Kerry set off to culinary school with the idea that food could be a tool to enable people who have experienced forced migration to thrive in their new communities. Kerry now lives in Potomac, MD, having recently expanded Emma’s Torch from NY to DC.

Meet Ray’Chel Wilson, CFEI®, personal finance teacher and Founder and CEO of ForOurLastNames, a financial education platform launching in February 2024 that bridges the gap in financial literacy and investment opportunities for underrepresented groups. Ray’Chel beautifully applies her values of collective liberation to the work of financial wellness, asking how building wealth can be not just about individual benefit but value for the whole community.

I was taking a late afternoon stroll around my neighborhood the other day. The setting sun had already cast the houses and streets into gray shadows, but as I turned a corner, a bright rose-hued light caught my eye. A tall church steeple towering high above the gray rooftops glowed brilliantly with the pink light of the setting sun. The beauty of the scene took my breath away for a second. As I continued down the block and passed the church, I saw that it was in complete disrepair, abandoned, boarded up, a for sale sign on its expansive corner property. 

Meet Rev. Dustin Mailman, who is redefining what church looks like with his ministry Deep Time in Asheville, NC. Dustin created Deep Time as a faith community with and for those impacted by incarceration. Whereas many churches have a social ministry, Dustin flips the script, showing us what church as a social ministry can be. Part prison ministry, part coffee roastery, part workforce development effort, part violence prevention initiative, and more, Deep Time models a new vision of faith in action.

Earlier this year, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a report about an epidemic of loneliness and isolation in the U.S. Since Robert Putnam published his highly-acclaimed and widely-read book Bowling Alone in 2000, we've all been aware of the fraying social fabric in our country and the decline of organizations like faith communities that build social capital. The situation has now reached crisis proportions. With so many people crying out for community and connection, why are faith communities, which have fostered community and connection for centuries and millennia, failing to meet the demand?

Meet Umar Hakim-Dey, board chair for LA Voice, a PICO California federation in the Faith in Action network  and founder of Inkerij, a social enterprise that provides advisory services for social impact organizations. Originally from, and still residing in, Compton, California, Umar is an innovative community organizer, committed bridge-builder, and deep-hearted advocate for social justice.

Meet Abigale Haug, who we are thrilled to introduce as innoFaith’s new Communications Manager. We are grateful to have Abbie’s passion, skill, and beautiful spirit supporting the innoFaith mission. Originally from Minnesota, Abbie just moved from Washington, DC, to Somerville, Massachusetts, where she is working on a Masters of Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity.

Houston, we have a problem. The complexity of the issues we face, both global and local, are simply too great for any one person or organization to take on alone. And yet, the systems in which we operate tend to incentivize heroic leadership, organizational competition for funding, and transaction over relationship. The good news? There's a different way if we shift our frameworks, incentives, and approaches: cultivating networks.

Meet Kelly Moltzen, co-founder and convener of the Interfaith Public Health Network and food systems advocate and innovator. Guided by her Catholic roots, Franciscan commitment, and interfaith engagement, Kelly is a wealth of knowledge and action about all things related to food, health, nutrition, equity, and justice.

We enjoyed chatting with Inspired producer Kimberly Winston about innoFaith’s vision of thriving faith communities as catalysts for a thriving world and some of the inspiring innovators we’ve encountered and supported.

For the last few years, innoFaith has been an experiment to explore the people and organizations that are thinking differently or seeking to think differently about how people and communities of faith can engage and collaborate and use innovation to address the social challenges of our time. innoFaith is now at a point where we can do more to help nurture the ecosystem of people and organizations at the nexus of faith and innovation for social impact, but doing so requires more resources. We are excited to share that innoFaith is now fiscally sponsored by FJC, which enables us to raise money under FJC's 501c3 status.

Last month, I attended a gathering of “spiritual changemakers.” Participants at this event, Soularize—co-hosted by Ashoka, The Presencing Institute, and Co-Creative—came from around the world and from all layers of spirituality and religiosity. They shared a common commitment to imagining a different world in which all people thrive, and to the role that spirituality plays in creating that world.

Meet Tameeka Washington, founder of the Interfaith Coalition of Bowie, Maryland. Though she has a full-time job with the Department of Defense, Tameeka devotes her free time to building interfaith bridges in her community. We are excited to be supporting Tameeka’s organization and another partner, The Giving Square, to bring innovative programming to Tameeka’s creative Vacation Interfaith School this summer.

Meet Jon Adam Ross, Executive Director and Founding Artist of the In[HEIR]itance Project. Jon, an actor and playwright, uses his talents to build bridges in communities, linking people across faith traditions and other siloes to identify, engage with, and tell their shared stories through collaborative theater projects.

Meet Stephen Lewis, President of the Forum for Theological Exploration, co-founder of DO GOOD X, and co-author of A Way Out of No Way: An Approach to Christian Innovation, and Another Way: Living and Leading Change on Purpose. Stephen is a committed and thoughtful leader and developer of leaders, always thinking deeply about, and helping cultivate, the types of innovative, changemaking leadership that the challenges of our time require. We are grateful to have him as a friend and advisor to innoFaith.

A couple of decades ago, the United Church of Christ launched a marketing campaign with the phrase, "God is still speaking." For people of faith, some version of that idea—that even in our modern world, faith still matters, the divine is still real and present, the wisdom of our traditions has something to say about our modern predicament—keeps us believing, praying, and acting according to our faith values and principles. Of course, some of our theologies proclaim that regardless of what we do or don't do, that God will find a way. Some of our theologies also teach, though, that we are the way, co-creators with the divine. So if we listen, if we pay attention to where faith is moving today in this time and place, what might we hear?

Meet Rabbi Esther Lederman, Director of Congregational Innovation & Leadership at the Union for Reform Judaism. As a former congregational rabbi herself, Esther helps Jewish communities re-imagine their congregational life so they can adapt and thrive in an era of significant change and contribute to creating a better world.

Meet Nikhil Mandalaparthy, Deputy Executive Director of Hindus for Human Rights, and a committed advocate for pluralism and human rights. All over the world, we’ve seen how when religion and nationalism intertwine, it can drive hate, violence, and injustice. Inspired by his own faith, other traditions, and bhakti poets, Nikhil works to foster inclusive expressions of Hindu identity.

Ending homelessness is not a pie-in-the-sky aspiration for the organization Community Solutions. They are working to actually end it and have shown it’s possible. Fourteen counties across the U.S. have already reached “functional zero” homelessness—meaning it’s rare, quickly flagged when it happens, and quickly and sustainably resolved—using the Community Solutions methodology. In this Ashoka interview, founder Roseanne Haggerty talks about the approach and methodology.