Interfaith in Action
Interfaith in Action is a Registered Student Organization at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that was founded ca. 2002 by students who had interned with the Interfaith Youth Core.
The Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) was founded by Illinois alumnus Dr. Eboo Patel, who has had a significant influence on Interfaith in Action's formation and activity. Interfaith in Action continues to work closely with staff from the IFYC, who visit campus regularly hold trainings on leadership and interfaith dialogue facilitation.
The Days of Interfaith Youth Service
Interfaith in Action organizes an annual spring event called the Days of Interfaith Youth Service (DIYS). The purpose of this event is to bring together students from different faith communities (including students who have no faith at all) to serve the community and have inter-religious dialogue.
The largest scale and most notable DIYS to date was One Million Meals for Haiti, which was started by Interfaith in Action in 2010 as its annual DIYS project. Former Interfaith in Action President Gregory Damhorst brought the idea for a "meal packaging" event to campus from his hometown of Elgin, IL where the Chicago Metropolitan Divisional Office of the Salvation Army organized an identical project through a partnership with Kansas-based nonprofit Numana, Inc.
Damhorst reached the founder of Numana, Inc., former pastor Rick McNary, by telephone in late February of 2010 inquiring about the possibility of holding an event on the University of Illinois campus. The RSO then set out to raise $6,000 to fund a 20,000 meal event, but received the support of the Salvation Army's World Service Office, thus enabling a 1,000,000 meal event.
The Salvation Army's Champaign Corps, headed by Michael and Kris Fuqua, joined the project soon after, securing a former Hobby Lobby building to house the project, mobilizing the community to participate, and arranging the resources for a large-scale event.
On April 24th and 25th, 2010, 5,119 volunteers were reported to have participated in the One Million Meals for Haiti event, packaging 1,012,640 meals to send to hungry people in Haiti.
