About the Organization

The Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development (ICSD), based in Jerusalem, accesses the collective wisdom of the world’s religions to promote co-existence, peace, and sustainability through education and action. ICSD promotes and manifests an inter-religious vision for environmental sustainability by encouraging the cooperation and training of religious leaders, teachers, and communities on ecological issues.

Strategic Goals

The strategic goals of ICSD in 2013 are to engage in activities that:

  • Leverage achievements from the past year to develop ICSD’s outreach and impact. This shall be done in conjunction with partner organizations;
  • Capitalize on increasing interest in these activities to effectively engage our target audiences;
  • Develop organizational capacity in the long term to enable healthy growth.

Channels of Action: 2013

1. The United Planet Faith & Science Initiative uses video teleconferencing to engage the world’s principal spiritual leaders with the most respected scientific leaders in the domains of climate, ecology, and biodiversity. Videos of meeting highlights will be promoted globally and online media campaigns launched in parallel, to promote and engage communities worldwide. The Initiative is a collaborative effort with the US-based Interfaith Declaration on Climate Change.

2. Gardens of the Mothers Interfaith Women’s Project: bringing Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Druze women together for meetings, workshops and tree planting aimed at generating environmental action, strengthening ties among communities, and overcoming inter-religious strife. Developing an Action Plan on Environmental Sustainability will help participants bring change to their communities.

3. Interfaith-Environmental Conferences providing a forum for religious leaders and scientists to speak out on the intersection of faith and environmental issues. ICSD has organized, in conjunction with our partners, four interfaith environmental conferences. The conferences received broad media coverage in over 60 international media outlets.

4. Online Engagement on Faith and Ecology: ICSD has undertaken a social media campaign based on the video,”We Have Only One Home: Global Faith Leaders Addressing the Ecological Crisis.” The video includes statements by global faith leaders on ecology and protecting our environment, including the Dalai Lama, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. In addition, ICSD has assembled the web’s largest video collection on faith and ecology. The collection can be accessed by clicking here.

5. Eco Tourism in the Holy Land: Through its Israel-based eco-educational tourism projects, ICSD will continue to engage groups in Israel on the connection between ecology, Israel, and when desired, faith teachings. The separate websites of these two branches can be viewed by clicking to Eco Israel Tours and Jewish Eco Seminars. These branches generate income for ICSD.

6. Faith and Ecology Workshops for Students of Religion bringing together Muslim, Christian and Jewish students for a series of interactive workshops. The program will cultivate young leaders that will advance the common cause of environmental sustainability. Through the shared goal of environmental sustainability, students will promote coexistence and religious tolerance.

Organizational Development: ICSD strives to diversify its revenue stream with the goal of increasing organizational capacity in the long term. To this end, we plan to undertake in 2013 an online media fundraising campaign, which aims to increase the percentage of individual donors and recurring donations supporting our work by 30%.

Summary: ICSD is pleased to have successfully implemented a range of projects in partnership with numerous foundations, private donors, and paying clients. We plan to continue our work on the intersection between faith and ecology and welcome collaboration to enable the manifestation of the strategic goals and projects described above.

Organizational Status and Supporters:  ICSD is registered in Israel as a non-profit organization (amuta), and fiscally sponsored in the US by the Los Angeles based 501(c)3 Jumpstart.

Current supporters include The Julia Burke Foundation (Hawaii), the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (Germany), the British Shalom/Salaam Trust (England), the German Embassy in Israel, and private donors. Past supporters include The Julia Burke Foundation, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, the Pratt Foundation, the Green Environment Fund, and individual donors.