Support for the Soul Box Project through fiscal agent Fractured Atlas, to help our nation comprehend the gunfire epidemic by confronting communities with massive public displays of handmade origami Soul Boxes, each one representing one life torn apart by a gun incident. The goal is to display many tens of thousands of Soul Boxes together, illustrating the staggering toll of victims in a way that cannot be ignored.

Support for their core work, including spiritual retreats, managing and maintaining the land, ensuring the legacy of the indigenous teachings with younger leaders, support for Visions quests, the sun dance ceremony, the star dance ceremony and other gatherings of indigenous ceremonial leaders.

General support for Partners for Youth Empowerment (PYE Global) project "Increasing Capacity of Creative Empowerment Model Practioners in North America."

Support for a new rural ministries program.

Council of Michigan Foundations Conference
Fetzer staff have developed two sessions for the Council of Michigan Foundation’s conference: Faith & Philanthropy and Bridging Divides. The Institute staff has curated multiple sessions for the Upswell conference and have engaged the expertise and participation of eight expert presenters in the area of Bridging Divides. Presenters include: David Blankenhorn (Better Angels); John Wood (Better Angels); Joan Blades (Living Room Conversations); Eric Liu (Citizen’s University); and two participants from Leading through Connection.

Support funding an assistant to work on the successful administration of the 2019 Religion and Ecology Summit.

General support for The Berry Center. For more than 50 years, Wendell Berry has been one of the prophetic voices lifting up the increasingly destructive results of our failure to live in sacred relationship with the natural world.

Moving Art is the world’s first collection of 2D and 3D moving images created as fine art for digital screens and projection, from nature to cityscapes to visual effects. This is for a three-year sponsorship of the third season of Moving Art on Netflix available worldwide in January, 2019.

As part of the project, the Fetzer Institute will collaborate with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission to 1) conduct landscape analysis to identify key rhetorical framing and issues around democracy; 2) convene thought leaders to discuss key issues identified as part of the landscape analysis; 3) discuss learnings from the research and convenings at ERLC’s national conference in 2019; and 4) share insights/tools from the project directly with churches under the Southern Baptist Convention.

“Strangers, Neighbors, Friends: Muslim-Christian-Jewish Reflections on Compassion and Peace” is a collection of highly motivational and informational essays on Abrahamic approaches to neighbors, friends and even strangers. The authors hope that the essays will both inform and inspire Abraham’s children that God calls us to extend our love beyond family and neighbor to the stranger. We aim to show that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have the spiritual and moral resources to motivate respect and love for those of very different faith traditions.