Request for Proposals: AFR Theory & Practice
Request for Proposals
on ways that
AFR Theory & Practice Can Enhance Organizational Goals
Mission
The Abrahamic Family Reunion (AFR) project offers ways to use psychological and spiritual approaches in reconciling conflicts among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the United States. AFR emphasizes our shared values of compassion and justice, explores positive historical precedents, and acknowledges collective traumas. By providing resources for organizations in its network, AFR seeks to enhance the possibility of contrition and reconciliation among civil and religious representatives of the three Abrahamic traditions. AFR is a network of organizations bound together by the notion that all peoples seek and deserve dignity.
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Small Grant & In-kind Contributions
We will select up to four programs or organizations which seek our assistance in helping to adapt AFR theory into practice in their current settings.
Each program or organization selected will receive a $2000 – $3000 grant from AFR. Additionally, no-cost consulting will be available on-line and/or on-site from AFR project director Joseph Montville* and/or Tamar Miller*, a professional facilitator skilled at the meeting between, politics, inter-group engagement, organizational management, and contemplative practice.
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Request
We seek to deepen the adaptation of AFR theory into practice in as many Abrahamic venues as possible.
With that in mind, we invite organizations or programs that bring together Jews, Christians, and Muslims to submit brief one or two page proposals. Programs in community organizing, service projects, dialogue, action, or education are welcome. Organizations or groups of individuals could be bilateral or trilateral, i.e., Jewish/Muslim; Jewish/Christian; Muslim/Christian, or involve members of all three traditions.
Over the last two years, AFR has worked with a large number of religious leaders, social justice and peacemaking practitioners, and academics, in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., and several projects in the mid-west. We will begin with that cohort.
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Proposal
Please include:
- Your Organization/Project’s Mission
- A Brief listing of your current interfaith activities
- A Description of new initiatives, if applicable; and
- Answers to the following questions:
- In what ways might you engage AFR theory, and its suggested array of practices, to strengthen your organization’s capacity to achieve its goals? (Include specific goals and constituencies)
- Is there something unique in the way you work that AFR should explore further? Please explain.
To prepare and spark your creativity, applicants and their program partners are advised to visit the Abrahamic Family Reunion website to become familiar with the array of available materials.
If you are looking for theoretical and descriptive works, please see articles on:
- Jewish Muslim Relations: Middle East
- Multiple Religious Belonging: Compassion, Life, and Death
- Justice and the Burdens of History
Turning to the practice section of the site, we suggest you consult our many resources:
- Contemplative Methods
- Best Practices from dialogue, healing trauma and conflict, standards for levels of openness, religious sensibilities
- Group Dynamics and the Politics of Identity
- Syllabus of the Boston Theological Institute (BTI) course taught at Boston College – Toward an Abrahamic Family Reunion: Issues of Religion and Identity
For a basic reference work for Abrahamic community-building, you might review the Ethics and Pro-Social Values in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam paper.
We also recommend that applicants examine our past reports to become acquainted with a sampling of workshops we have conducted. The AFR Strategic Planning Workshop that took place in March of 2007 is a good starting place. That frank and revealing workshop asked: “What do you need to hear from the other two traditions in order to imagine and believe the Abrahamic family reunion is possible? The reports on Muslim, Christian and Jewish Fundamentalism workshops are also rich in content.
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Please send proposals to Vanessa Brake, assistant to Joseph Montville, AFR Director by July 15, 2009. Email: vbrake@abrahamicfamilyreunion.org
Application Format: Attach as Word 97-2003 document or paste into the body of your email.
Questions about this RFP can be submitted on the AFR forum>>
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AFR is made possible by the generous support of the Fetzer Institute, under the guidance of Eric Nelson, Program Officer and the Esalen Institute Center for Theory and Research.
*Joseph V. Montville is director of the Abrahamic Family Reunion, the Esalen Institute project to promote Muslim-Christian-Jewish reconciliation. He is also Senior Adviser on Interfaith Relations at Washington National Cathedral, and has appointments at American and George Mason Universities. Montville founded the preventive diplomacy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 1994 and directed it until 2003. Before that he spent 23 years as a diplomat with posts in the Middle East and North Africa. He also worked in the State Department’s Bureaus of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs and Intelligence and Research, where he was chief of the Near East Division and director of the Office of Global Issues. Montville has held faculty appointments at the Harvard and University of Virginia Medical Schools.
Tamar Miller consults to social change organizations with a focus on the contemporary Middle East. She was co-director of the New England regional office of The New Israel Fund; VP Education and one of three founders of an international company, American Higher Education, inc,; and Partner in Middle East Holdings, a business development firm based in Boston and Dubai. Tamar was Director of Leadership Development and then Executive Director of the Institute for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East at Harvard University. She also was a community organizer in Ethiopian, Yemenite, and Moroccan disenfranchised communities in Israel. Tamar holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Judaic Studies, Master of Social Work from Yeshiva University and a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University.