Better Together is a national movement put on by the Interfaith Youth Core that aims to promote interfaith and understanding. The movement has different organizations on campuses throughout the country, including a new student club at Grand Valley State University.

“We promote interfaith through community service,” said Rainesha Williams-Fox, a member of the Better Together club at GVSU. “We are all about bringing different religions and backgrounds together for the greater good, understanding that we may have our differences but we all can work together because we all have, in a sense, the same goal.”

Better Together began at the start of last semester after a group of GVSU students attended an Interfaith Leadership Institute event in Chicago.

Williams-Fox was among the students who attended the program and now serves as the liaison between Better Together at GVSU and the National Leadership team of the Interfaith Youth Core.

At the institute, students were able to interact with people from all over the country with varying backgrounds and beliefs, not just the mainstream religions, Williams-Fox noted. The event offered GVSU students an opportunity to see what other universities with Better Together organizations were doing.

Since the club is still new, its members want to inform students about the organization’s goals, Williams-Fox said.

“When you hear interfaith, some students are turned back from it,” Williams-Fox said. “So we want them to understand we’re not promoting a religion, we’re promoting understanding, working together and that collaborative effort for the greater good.”

Williams-Fox encouraged any student who is open-minded and has an interest in learning about different experiences and people to join.

“I think, in order to really succeed in life, you have to be really open to meet new people, so that’s what Better Together is,” Williams-Fox said. “We bridge the gap between different religions and come together.”

Since it has been on campus, Better Together at GVSU has been involved with many events including InclusiviTEA, an opportunity for students to participate in a panel to share their faith and non-faith experiences.

“Hummus not Hate Dialogue not Debate” is the next event Better Together at GVSU is sponsoring. Students of varying faiths and non-faiths will get the chance to participate in round table discussions on interfaith and cooperation. It will occur on March 18 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the Multipurpose Room of the Mary Idema Pew Library.

Community service opportunities Better Together has arranged include partnering with Kids’ Food Basket, participating in the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, working with Habitat for Humanity on an interfaith-service project and meeting religious leaders in Grand Rapids.

“I think that no matter where we come from and what we believe or not believe, we can all come together and help out our community – looking past our religious differences and finding commonalities,” said Better Together Vice President Shelby Bruseloff.

The GVSU Kaufman Interfaith Institute helps oversee Better Together, as they assist with programming and funding.

Douglas Kindschi, director of the Kaufman Interfaith Institute, and Katie Gordon, Better Together adviser and Kaufman program manager, offer local and national connections in the interfaith world that have been helpful, Bruseloff said.

In the future, Better Together at GVSU hopes to work more with faith-based organizations on campus to create more community service opportunities.

“We don’t seem to talk about religion on our campus, so I think it’s important for students to finally have that conversation and to have the space for it,” Bruseloff said.

For more information, look up Better Together at GVSU on OrgSync or Facebook.