Success Stories

The Coalition at Work

Aside from pursuing an integrated strategy of helping youth/families in at-risk environments, the Interfaith Coalition’s message and goals, and the power of faith-based organizations working together, can best be viewed by our role in several recent events:

Prison Reform

In September 2005, the Interfaith Coalition organized and hosted a two-day event at First & Central Presbyterian Church with Reverend Eugene Rivers from the Boston Ten Point Coalition, to talk about ways that Wilmington’s faith based community could work together to reduce violence in the city and address other critical issues in a coordinated way. At that meeting, a petition was signed by over 30 clergy from across all faith backgrounds decrying the medical care and treatment of those incarcerated in Delaware’s prisons. The petition was sent to the Governor, and represented the first time in recent memory that such a large group of diverse faith based leaders came together in support of a single issue. As we know, investigations into prison practices were subsequently ordered due to the pressure of organized and unified efforts like ours.

Covenant of Hope

As the Hope Commission report was nearing its release date in March 2006, the Interfaith Coalition, IMAC, and the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League drafted the Wilmington Covenant of Hope as an expression of support and unity among faith leaders, urging them to be proactive and cooperative in pursuit of a common cause…a better Wilmington for everyone.  The Wilmington Covenant of Hope was again recently highlighted at the August Quarterly events where it was signed by a large number of faith-based organizations in the city.

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It is this positive energy, organization, and cooperation that will help make our program specific strategies succeed. The same leaders that came together to speak with one voice on prison reforms and the Wilmington Covenant of Hope are ready to come together for the Interfaith Coalition’s strategic intervention to help at-risk youth.