Saint Louis University’s Better Together Campaign to promote multicultural education stems from the Interfaith Youth Core. “What if people of all faiths and traditions worked together to promote the common good for all?” asks the Interfaith Youth Core’s website. “What if once again, young people led the way?”
IFYC now reaches college campuses primarily through its Better Together Campaign, a model for interfaith dialogue and action for students and young people. The campaign allows students to choose a social issue within their community, drawing inspiration from major activists such as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi, who were both only in their 20s when they started their revolutionary work.
The Better Together campaign at SLU is an offshoot of the Interfaith Alliance and is now in its second year.
This year, spearheaded by co-chairs Claire Moll and Sara Rahim, along with Olivia White (who is now abroad), Better Together is addressing the lack of multicultural education in St. Louis schools. Rahim and Moll describe the campaign as a social justice initiative to “take action and mobilize students about multicultural education.”
The main way in which they act out this mission in at the Youth Learning Center. Once a month, volunteers from Better Together will teach 3rd-6th graders about different cultures around the world; so far they have taught about India, the Middle East, China, Mexico, and Northern Europe. They have also worked with the language immersion school and aim to start working with public schools this semester as well.
They broadcast the importance of multicultural education to the SLU community through occasional on-campus events. The next event will be during ATLAS Week, an annual on-campus event starting on March 26 that promotes awareness, discussion, and action about global issues.
“We’ll be putting on a poverty simulation to show the effects of education and educational levels,” co-chair Rahim said.
Since Better Together sends students to monthly service opportunities, SLU students can get involved in the campaign by volunteering as many times as they like. “No commitment is required,” Rahim said, “and we welcome all students to come.”
One such student was sophomore Sarah Sinsky, who went to the Youth Learning Center with Elevation, SLU’s Irish dance team. “I loved volunteering with the campaign because I had the privilege of showing a different culture and celebrating it with young students. The kids seemed really interested, and it was great getting to spread the joy and pride I feel from Irish dancing with others.”
What the campaign is hoping to do by working with multicultural education is to challenge and break down stereotypes at the level where they breed.
As Moll said, “It’s harder to change a college student’s mine than a 3rd grader’s mind.” SLU is a diverse campus and students here have many opportunities to experience different cultures; Rahim says that SLU students should go out to areas that might not have that exposure to diversity. She continues by emphasizing the importance of diversity due to the increasingly globalized job market and the necessity that college graduates diversify themselves to become better candidates.
The Interfaith Youth Core is a national non-profit founded in 2002 by Eboo Patel. The IFYC has worked on five continents and on more than 200 college campuses across the country. IFYC’s mission is to unite and advocate discussion among people of different faith backgrounds and cultures.
