Steering Committee Report from AGM - Oct 9, 2025

by Jay Moore, on behalf of the Steering Committee

Since our last AGM in 2024, the Steering Committee has continued in the pattern established for a number of years, planning the monthly Members’ Meetings and offering our vocal support from an interfaith perspective to efforts to improve circumstances in the community.

Highlights of Activities

• Participated as co-hosts for the Film Forum led by Laurier Wellbeing (WLU) at The Princess Cinema.

• Submitted a letter to the provincial government stating our position on the presence of safe consumption sites in our region. Brice Balmer was interviewed on air about this, twice with the local CBC and twice with 570 News.

• Approved a number of policies that are part of our bylaws. There is more work to do in this area.

• Michael Clifton arranged for a number of us to go on a tour of a newly built LDS Temple in Mississauga.

• Presented an activity for World Interfaith Harmony Week that was listed by Multifaith Conversations at the University of Toronto along many other events. The activity was a presentation by Brian Carwana of Encounter World Religions called, “The Western Lens.”

• Decided to return to two hour Members’ Meetings to restore the opportunities for social interaction during a long break in the middle of the meeting.

• Offered an interfaith Sunday service at Rockway Mennonite Church, led by Brice Balmer, for the congregation with contributions of others from non-Christian faiths.

• Offered an interfaith Sunday service at Grand River Unitarian Congregation, led by Jay Moore, for the congregation with contributions of others of different faiths. This was the third interfaith service held at GRU in three years.

• One of our Members’ Meetings was also planned as a pot-luck meal to encourage more relationship-building within IGR. We hope to repeat this event in the future.

• Honoured the contributions of Darrol Bryant to the cause of interfaith upon his passing.

• Provided a booth again at the Multicultural Festival and this year we had new volunteers and more volunteers than in the recent past.

• Connected with the Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan through Norm Finkelberg and Jay Moore will attend the Anti-hate Community Awareness Plan meetings coming up.

• A few of our members attended the Strawberry Thanksgiving Communion at Rockway Collegiate to recognize and celebrate our relations with local Indigenous people. It was led by Adrian Jacobs, an Indigenous clergyman and community leader.

• Attended a meeting held for people who were concerned about the closure of Loyola House Retreat Centre in Guelph. We were invited because we may be interested in contributing to the survival of the retreat centre and use such a facility. We will not be directly involved at this stage but we may find ways to work together in the future.

• Began the development of an online resource for chaplains in hospices. Yvonne Aburrow, one of our members, suggested the idea and volunteered to use her skills to develop the Chaplaincy Resources website. This may blossom into wider applications in the future. Work has begun on this project.

• Held a four hour, Long Range Planning session with the Steering Committee to address some concerns for our future. There are a number of significant changes in the IGR organization under consideration and we will be talking about our ideas in more detail soon.

Outstanding Priorities

• Clarify and strengthen the relationship between the Interfaith Community Breakfast Planning Committee and the rest of Interfaith Grand River. There is a need to help everyone understand how all of us work together and to join forces to help reach all our goals.

• Attain charitable status. We have been limited in our fundraising efforts, both with the Breakfast and with other IGR activities because we do not have charitable status to encourage financial support. This must be a priority.

• Become more welcoming and open to anyone with an interest in interfaith activity and principles, making room for them to attend meetings, events and to volunteer to help with our activities.

• Offer more, larger public events to increase our visibility in the community, provide educational opportunities and to encourage more relationship-building among other agencies and groups and their leaders in the community.