The following is the press release from Faith & the Common Good announcing the launch of the Greening Canadian Mosques Project.
In keeping with our commitment to work with interfaith partners for sustainable communities, Faith & the Common Good (FCG) is delighted to begin a new partnership with EnviroMuslims (EM) to green Canadian mosques.
Islam holds high regard for environmental stewardship and sees it as a religious duty for Muslims to participate in the care of the planet. As such, there is growing interest from Islamic leaders in Canadian mosques to engage in sustainable practices and a need for support and guidance to set and achieve targets.
Thanks to generous funding provided by the Olive Tree Foundation, the Greening Canadian Mosques program aims to address this interest and empower mosque management teams, as well as mosque-goers, to understand environmental issues and take appropriate action.
“The overall objective is to understand what kind of support Canadian mosques need to embed sustainability in their operations, and the tools they need to identify, track and deliver resource efficiency opportunities,’ says Michelle Singh, Executive Director of FCG. “At the same time, the project will identify potential facility cost savings.”
There are over one million Muslims in Canada and over 903 mosques. One resource that the project will develop is a Toolkit designed specifically for Canadian mosques to improve sustainable practices, reduce carbon emissions, and reduce costs. As part of the development of the Toolkit, FCG and EM will be bringing together local sustainability experts and mosque leaders in a roundtable event to ask for their input on the resources developed.
“Mosques serve both as a place of worship and a place to generate economy, education, and social cohesion of the community,” says Areej Riaz, Lead Climate Programs at EnviroMuslims. “They can serve as an influential medium for spiritually and behaviorally congruent environmental sustainability interventions in Muslim populations, and for improving and maintaining a healthier environment.
The project launched on October 1, 2020, and will run until March 15, 2021.
Contact: Michelle Singh at msingh@faithcommongood.org for more information.
Download a PDF of the announcement here.
Faith & the Common Good is a national, interfaith charitable network with a mission to harness the power of diverse faith and spiritual groups through education, capacity building, and collective action to build more resilient and sustainable Canadian communities.
EnviroMuslims is a group of Canadian Muslims working to engage with, educate, and empower the Canadian Muslim community to embed sustainable practices where they live, work, play, and pray.
The Olive Tree Foundation is a philanthropic foundation that promotes community development through the collection of endowed funds and charitable contributions to fund services for the long-term benefit of the community.