YOUNG RELIGIOUS LEADERS' PROJECT AND SEMINARIANS FOR WORKER JUSTICE

The Young Religious Leaders Project (YRLP) was formed six years ago when CLUE L.A. realized the need for strategic and structured involvement of young leaders within it's work. The program involves a range of individuals, including high school students, seminarians, rabbinical students, college students and recently graduated young adults in the Los Angeles County area.

Students come from Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, Protestant and Hindu backgrounds. At least half come from conservative evangelical churches and have had little to no exposure to social justice organizing or interfaith relationships before they enter the program.

The work of the project has been to provide training and supervision for young leaders, helping them to focus and channel their vigor and passion into positive and successful change in our community. The project also works to empower students to become leaders now instead of merely leaders in the future.

CLUE L.A. has been able to offer an incredibly rich internship experience for 10-15 young religious leaders each summer and each semester during the school term. Their internship experience combines active engagement in economic justice campaigns led by the most effective community-labor coalition in the country and direct responsibility for recruiting and organizing clergy and congregations from across the religious and political spectrum. These interns do not do clerical work; they learn to organize. In the process, they exercise leadership, carry out individual interviews to recruit volunteers, facilitating meetings with volunteers twice their age, managing planning and evaluation sessions.

Three years ago, CLUE L.A. initiated an advanced internship in which some of the most gifted young leaders continue their development and service by working for CLUE-CA founding organizations and chapters as well as allied organizations as part-time paid organizers. These advanced interns do amazing work; they have been the main organizers in the founding of five of CLUE L.A.'s interfaith organizing committees (groups of religious leaders in different areas in charge of local campaigns). By the time that they leave, they have become fully trained organizers with a lifetime commitment to being religious leaders who promote social justice activism.

In addition to internships, the Young Religious Leaders' Project also engages over 200 students and other young religious leaders every semester in opportunities for reflection and action. These young leaders come together for training workshops or reflection sessions to meet low-wage worker leaders and learn about economic justice and non-violent direct action. Interns and project participants also learn to utilize the faith-rooted organizing model. Project participants also join an Ad-Hoc Action Planning Task Force which creates one to three youth-led actions per semester to support the economic justice campaign of their choice. Interns and young leaders have also had the opportunity to attend conferences and training in Chicago with Interfaith Worker Justice and other partner organization trainings.. These trainings are geared towards teaching them how to organize within the religious community and to educate them on the history of the labor movement.

Seminarians for Worker Justice at the Graduate Theological Union in Northern California was initiated and is supervised by CLUE-CA founding organization the East Bay Interfaith Worker Justice Committee. SWJ organizes seminarians at eight Protestant and Catholic seminaries to participate and exercise leadership in worker justice campaigns in the San Francisco Bay Area.