Faiths Act

As we set out our goals for our Bay Area Against Malaria campaign- the legacy of our amazing Faiths Act predecessors Tim and Hafsa- we decided that we wanted a question to frame our work. We wanted to begin a dialogue that encouraged spiritual and social justice-based development. And so we decided to ask the Bay Area and ourselves, “What makes a healthy community?”

 We are asking this question to expand our notions and understandings of “health” and “community.” What does it mean to be healthy, and what do you identify as your community? Is your community your family, your friends, your city, your nation, humanity, or all living creatures on earth?  How can we take care of the smaller communities as well as the larger ones?  What is our role as a connector between our immediate family and a family in another part of the world?

 Additionally, we think about what it means for a community to be healthy as a whole. As we continue to reflect on this, it becomes clear that we need a holistic approach to health. We must think about mental, physical, spiritual and social health. We must be concerned with the spread of preventable and treatable diseases such as malaria, as well as the stigma that is unjustly associated with HIV/AIDs. And we must be concerned about the homeless that suffer from mental illness, and what it means for us as a community that our most common reaction is to simply turn our gaze. Can we deem our community healthy if domestic violence, LGBTQI assault, and sexual abuse are cultural norms? And isn’t an interfaith environment, one that is welcoming and open to the views of others, spiritually healthy?

We can’t be a truly healthy community if we continue to draw divisions between “us” and “them.” We believe we can make our global community healthier if we stop categorising certain issues as “someone else’s problem,” and recognise our interconnectedness and collective responsibility to heal the world.

Nina Pine and Rachel Finn, Faiths Act Fellows