April's reflection comes from Muhammad Shahzad Hussain, who serves at Faith in Place as Multifaith Outreach Coordinator. Please enjoy it below and sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on upcoming events.  Mr. and Mrs. Heinens, Tom and Katie, have been my gracious neighbors. Despite my status as a newcomer to Milwaukee, they warmly welcomed me into their community. Their kindness extended beyond mere neighborly gestures—they introduced me to numerous religious and environmental groups in the region.  On Holy Thursday, they invited me to St. Michael's and St ..read more

March's reflection comes from Rev. Wade Halva, who serves at Faith in Place as Southern Illinois Senior Outreach Coordinator. Please enjoy it below and sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on upcoming events.  I picked up a camera again several years ago. Digital had suddenly made things cheaper, and it connected me with my father’s legacy, who taught me in the first place. I really wanted to get the technical aspects of photography right. Exposure, composition, and shutter speed, all carefully considered – and not giving me the results I hoped for ..read more

February's reflection comes from Eric Riddle, who serves at Faith in Place as Development Coordinator. Please enjoy it below and sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on upcoming events. In my creative writing practice, I stumbled upon haiku about a decade ago. I wrote this one while spending time among my raised garden beds:   Best fertilizer Shadow of the gardener Care of dirty hands   When asked to reflect on what inspires my work, this haiku came to mind. Why? Because in environmental work, the best solutions are often low-tech. We have to be willing to get dirty and not ..read more

Happy New Year! As we bid farewell to 2023, we hope it left you with many memories filled with peace and joy. As the calendar turns to January, while many of our religious traditions recognize the new year at different times, all of us at Faith in Place see this as a moment to pause, reflect, and gather energy for the journey ahead in 2024. We're filled with anticipation for new opportunities and eager to build on the impactful work we've already begun. Celebrating 25 Years - A Journey of Growth This year is especially meaningful for us as Faith in Place celebrates a quarter-century of actio ..read more

EXCITING NEWS: We are honored to announce that Faith in Place, the Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin affiliate of Interfaith Power and Light, has been awarded a historic level of funding to expand tree equity and forestry workforce development in disadvantaged communities across our three-state region. The federal grant funding from the U.S. Forest Service through the Inflation Reduction Act will primarily be regranted to partners across our three states in disadvantaged communities to increase equitable access to trees and the many benefits they provide to our planet and in urban communities ..read more

Faith in Place Green Team site, ,Greater St. John Bible Church in the Austin neighborhood in Chicago has completed the construction of their Community Incubator Kitchen! It has been a lengthy process to get to this point, but now programming for others to use the kitchen can finally begin. This pilot project came to be when Faith in Place received funding from the U.S Department of Agriculture’s Farmers Market Promotion Program. One of the biggest obstacles for small food business owners is not having access to commercial kitchen spaces because of costs. The incubator kitchen is a perfect mode ..read more

In March of this year, The Guardian published an analysis that revealed the worst 10 hotspots for fine particle air pollution in the US. Four of the 10 areas they named are regions where Faith in Place staff live and/or work. Those regions include: #3 Chicago’s South & West Sides #4 Northwest Indiana (industrial zones) #5 Central Indianapolis #7 St. Louis Metro which includes East St. Louis, IL To honor Asthma and Mental Health Awareness Month in May, our team decided to cover this topic on an episode of Voices of the Earth. Take a listen to the episode here. This blog serves as a compani ..read more

Are you curious about "natural and/or green burial"? What do those terms even mean? On this episode of Voices of the Earth—A Faith in Place Podcast, your hosts Katie Maxwell and Lauren Paris discuss natural burial from a US perspective. We describe the basics of green burial and suggest many experts and their resources for learning about the topic further. We had so many links we wanted to share and not enough room to share them in the podcast's caption that we decided to make this blog post where you can find all of them. Click here to jump to those resources below. This week’s episode was p ..read more

Happy New Year! On behalf of the Faith in Place team and community, we are grateful to be starting a new season with you and all our Green Teams. Below is a reflection from our Deputy Director, Elena Canler, about our theme for 2023: The Year of Intersectionality. "There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives." - Audre Lorde We have dubbed 2023, “The Year of Intersectionality” after a year of wrestling with the challenging complexities of our environmental and social crises. Intersectionality is a term first coined by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw ..read more

Today, in response to President Joe Biden signing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law, the Faith in Place Action Fund released the following statement. Faith in Place Action is thrilled to celebrate the signing of the ,Inflation Reduction Act into law. With this historic win for climate justice and healthcare access, we are hopeful for a new future that protects and prioritizes frontline communities and our shared home. This law marks a major step in lowering barriers to access clean energy and affordable healthcare—both intersecting ,justice issues that make material differences in the ..read more