We’re Expanding to Boston!

We are very pleased to announce that, thanks to a generous new grant partnership with Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston, InterfaithFamily will be launching InterfaithFamily/Boston this fall. This will be our fourth InterfaithFamily/Your Community, joining Chicago, Philadelphia and the San Francisco Bay Area in our growing network of local community programs.

InterfaithFamily/Boston will have a full time Director, a 10 hour per week “ambassador” to focus on activities and connections in the North Shore area, and 10 hours per week of marketing and project management support. This initial staffing will enable us to focus on key objectives of our IFF/Your Community model:

• People in interfaith relationships will connect with Greater Boston Jewish community resources as well as with others like them, through an active “interfaith ambassador” working on engagement and relationship building, resources and referrals for supporting life cycle events, a Greater Boston Community Page and robust listings of organizations, professionals and events on the online IFF Network, active social media, and traditional PR and marketing.
• Jewish professionals and organizations will learn to attract, welcome and engage people in interfaith relationships, through inclusivity and sensitivity trainings, and resources on the IFF Network.

We will be working closely with other Greater Boston interfaith engagement organizations funded by CJP (URJ – Reform Jewish Outreach Boston, the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston, and the Jewish Discovery Institute) to help promote the programs they offer and build relationships with their program participants.

We have begun the hiring process; links to the Director and North Shore Ambassador positions are http://www.interfaithfamily.com/directorboston and http://www.interfaithfamily.com/nsambassador. Stacie Garnett-Cook, National Director of InterfaithFamily/Your Community, will supervise the Director of IFF/Boston. Deb Morandi, our Connections Coordinator, and Lindsey Silken, our Managing Editor, initially will be providing marketing and project management support.

Going forward, we are immediately seeking additional funding not only to continue the new staffing beyond July 2014, but also to expand it to a full time Project Manager, which will enable us to expand the above activities and add other key objectives of our model: helping new couples learn how to talk about and have religious traditions in their lives together, and helping people in interfaith relationships learn how – and why – to live Jewishly, through an array of consultations, workshops/group discussions, and classes.

We are extremely grateful to CJP for making this growth of the InterfaithFamily/Your Community initiative possible.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.