Category: Updates

Strength from the Roots is a project of our Arts and Culture program. Through this program we create an active and engaging experience were often marginalized populations in the Inland Empire are able to participate in art and cultural activities with members of their community and of different ethnic backgrounds.  In the program participants are united through mutual life experiences and are giving the opportunity to create space to express their voice. Participants join each other and through professional coaching are given the skills to create cultural songs related to their individual and collective life experiences.
Following several months of practice the participants develop two interactive performances from their initial work, which reaches into their community with over 400 attendees.

The Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity has unique model which combines faith-based organizing, arts and cultural work, and strategic communication to address, protect and advocate for improvements to the quality of life for the most disenfranchised and vulnerable members of our society.  We carry out our mission through a theory of social change that organizes and unites inter-religious voices with those directly affected, including persons who are low-income, historically-underrepresented, and immigrant to oppose and improve conditions of harsh and inhumane enforcement (incarceration, detention and deportations) and other mistreatment based on status.

Our unique contributions to supporting community-led change are:

• We strive to break down barriers and build up deep relationships and new understanding between immigrant/new arrivals and U.S.-born citizens through accompaniment, education, cultural immersion, and arts and cultural work.
• We work to shift narratives and to change hears and minds through strategic communication, public witness, and our “FAITH OUT FRONT” liturgies/ We do this by humanizing immigrant stories and bringing our inter-religious  voices particularly to sectors where they are insufficient or absent, by consistently lifting up root causes and racial equity, and by cultivating “unusual/unlikely” messengers” such as African Americans supporting the immigrant rights movement and corporation leaders advocating racial, social, and economic justice.
• We build economic, racial and social justice networks by forming partnerships with inter-religious communities and collaborating with enlightened secular individuals and organizations to build power and make valuable contributions to wider change.
• We believe social change must be rooted in the tenets of inter-religious texts and traditions that respect the integrity of every human person as sacred with the right to thrive and live in strong and healthy communities.