Greening Canadian Mosques: Program Launch

By Saba Khan

In partnership with EnviroMuslims and with generous funding from Olive Tree Foundation, Faith & the Common Good has launched Greening Canadian Mosques, the first program of its kind giving Canadian mosques the tools and resources they need to embed sustainable practices and policies within their facilities.

As is the case for many religions, Islam holds a high regard for environmental stewardship and the important role humans have as stewards of the planet. Muslims all over the world have a religious duty to learn about environmental issues and make changes both individually and collectively to protect the natural environment. While there is growing interest from Islamic leaders and mosques in Canada to engage on the matter, there is limited targeted guidance and support for them to lead the way on environmental stewardship. 

The Greening Canadian Mosques program aims to support Canadian mosques in developing and implementing environmentally friendly practices and policies. The program consists of two main resources:

 Toolkit: The toolkit features key statistics and Islamic references on environmental issues, helpful resources, inspiring case studies, and creative ideas to make mosques more environmentally and economically sustainable – reducing their impact on the environment while contributing to the well-being of local communities. The toolkit consists of different areas that mosques can focus their efforts on including waste management, water stewardship, energy conservation, sustainable transportation, community engagement, event management and environmentally conscious efforts towards greening the holy month of Ramadan. Each of these sections are divided into tangible actions that can be taken depending on their relevant costs (no-cost, low-cost, and high-cost). The toolkit also consists of policy templates, action plans, and resources to help gain the support of senior leadership.

Communications Package: The communications package consists of graphics and word templates to help mosques showcase their leadership and participation in the program. These consist of templates for newsletters and websites, as well as social media templates and graphics to communicate participation in the program.

Another important feature of the communications package is the addition of multilingual posters that can be displayed in Canadian mosques. The posters are in Somali, Hindi, Urdu, Arabic and Gujrati, and cater to the diverse Canadian Muslim population.

The Greening Canadian Mosques program is a call to action for Muslim community leaders to embed policies and practices within their mosques centering around the protection of the natural environment, and to encourage their Muslim congregations and community members to uphold their roles as stewards of the environment – protecting it from harm and leaving it in a state better than how we found it, for our future generations.

This piece was originally published on Faith and the Common Good on May 17 2021.

Growing Gardens at the Islamic Foundation

By: Donna Lang

This year the Islamic Foundation of Toronto created a vegetable garden on their front and side lawns. They very much enjoyed planting, weeding, watering, and harvesting the fruits of their labour. The garden was funded by TD Friends of the Environment Foundation. Scotts Canada donated the soil. The grant was coordinated by Faith & the Common Good.

On September 10, 2020,the Islamic Foundation of Toronto held a picnic at Milliken Park, in Scarborough, in order to celebrate their very first vegetable garden. They used peppers from their garden to make spicy pickles, and they also made pasta sauce from the tomatoes they grew. 35 seniors attended. Sajeda Khan (Social Services and Senior's Program Coordinator, at IFT) gave a brief talk about the benefit of native plants and pollinators, and also the fact that less water is needed. Here is their gardening story:

IFT 2020 Garden Blog   

Donna Lang from Faith & the Common Good, Toronto chapter, helped with the project management and procurement of the soil and plants. There were 3 other gardens as part of the TD FEF grant; Holy Cross Parish, Shaarei Shomayim Congregation and Eglinton St. Georges United. Donna asked the garden leaders if Covid affected their gardens, and she was told " Not really. It meant that we had to stagger volunteers on planting day, and thus the planting took a bit longer, but the long hot summer and enthusiasm for gardening this year, more than compensated for this".

Next year, IFT plans to expand their gardens. 

How Greening Sacred Spaces Energy Benchmarking Program Can Help Mosques Fight Climate Change in Ottawa

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the social fabric of our communities by exposing how some of the most important members of our community, for example the working poor and elderly, are disproportionately affected and made vulnerable by the pandemic’s effects. However, throughout this challenging time, we have also seen how the strength of our faith communities has brought hope and relief to those most impacted by this virus. Faith leaders and faith communities are playing a crucial role in providing essential services to people in terms of food, shelter, medical supplies, companionship and counselling during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Climate change, brought about by the warming of our planet through the accumulation of greenhouse gasses (GHGs), is another serious challenge faced by society in which our faith communities can provide leadership and service to its communities. While, for many, faith organizations do not immediately come to mind as leaders of environmental sustainability, there are lessons that can be learned from spiritual teachings.

For example, in Islam the concept of “mizan” speaks to the importance of balance in one’s life, spiritually and in one’s relationships with others. The concept can be extended to include ecological balance and the importance of being good environmental stewards by protecting one of God’s most valuable gifts to man, our home, the Earth. As well, the Quran (21:32) states the following: "And We made the sky a protected ceiling, but they, from its signs, are turning away."

In 2015, Islamic leaders, senior international development policy makers, and academics signaled to Muslims in their Islamic Declaration on Climate Change the importance of not turning away from our need to help the planet. These Islamic leaders and thinkers encouraged an active role in combatting climate change and working together towards reducing GHG emissions in order to create a climate resilient future.

Faith & the Common Good (FCG) is an organization that has heeded this call through its Greening Sacred Spaces (GSS) program. This long running program is designed to assist faith communities of all backgrounds with both the educational and spiritual dimensions of “greening” in the spaces used by the faithful for worship.

In 2019 Greening Sacred Spaces launched its Energy Benchmarking Program (EBP) in Ottawa. The EBP is designed to help communities play a role in mitigating climate change by encouraging practical and cost-effective activities that can be implemented by faith leaders and the faithful. This includes raising awareness of the harm caused by damaging our “protective ceiling” and by taking pragmatic steps such as examining the carbon footprint of our shared places of worship and implementing energy saving practices.

Understanding your current energy use is the first step in reducing it — you can’t manage your energy use if you don’t measure what your use is in the first place. Greening Sacred Spaces Ottawa is seeking participants for a free Energy Benchmarking program fully funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, City of Ottawa and Sustainable Capacity Foundation to help faith communities lower and track their energy use and emissions.

Energy benchmarking refers to the process of measuring a building’s energy performance against its past performance and other similar buildings. Because buildings typically account for 42% of a faith community’s carbon footprint, understanding your energy consumption is a vital first step to creating a greener, more sustainable community. Benchmarking provides information that enables you to more accurately assess the effectiveness of your energy-saving measures and better plan for future projects. In addition, it supports financial stewardship: benchmarked buildings on average reduce usage by 2.4% annually.

The Energy Benchmarking Program (EBP) was first launched as a pilot in Toronto in 2017 and has since successfully reached over a hundred GTA communities. Toronto area mosques have already seen benefits from participating, including Masjid Toronto. Thornhill's Jaffari Islamic Centre participated in the EBP as part of York Region. In 2019, the Jaffari Community Centre was presented with Faith and the Common Good's York Region Sustainability Award which is given to a faith-community in York Region in recognition of notable efforts to embed environmental sustainability actions within their community. Both mosques represent are good examples green-minded communities hoping to do their part to invest cost savings back into the communities, as well as participate in protecting the Earth.

In Ottawa, a total of 50 faith communities will receive an annual benchmarking reports. Data is compiled using the Energy Star Portfolio Manager® online tool – the same program used by Natural Resources Canada – to create a baseline report that shows your faith community how much money your energy use has cost for your building and information about your greenhouse gas emissions. What you choose to do with these reports is up to your faith community, however we are also here to answer any questions or concerns that the energy reports raise and link you to evidence based information on what your next steps might be.

In this respect the EBP program also provides participants with additional resources including energy-efficiency tools, links to energy audit funding, information on energy-saving incentives, and educational workshops. Our objective is to work closely alongside communities in identifying means of decreasing energy consumption.

To find out more about the EBP or to sign up your faith organization, visit https://www.faithcommongood.org/energy_benchmarking or contact Dr. Ruth Bankey at rbankey@faithcommongood.org or Emine Turgut at gssenergyy@faithcommongood.org.

This piece was originally published on Muslim Link on September 8th 2020.

A Testament to Multifaith Collaboration

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The support of a leading community foundation for the charity, Faith & the Common Good (FCG), is a testament to the value of multi-faith collaboration said Dr. Lucy Cummings, Executive Director of FCG.

Cummings made the remarks on Sunday at the announcement of a grant to Faith & the Common Good by the Olive Tree Foundation (OTF).

“The support for our work from the Olive Tree Foundation is an important sign of support from a leading Canadian Muslim community foundation,” said Dr. Lucy Cummings.  “This is not only a deep honor, but a testament to the value of multi-faith environmental collaboration in Canada.”

The grant was announced at the Annual Awards Ceremony of the Olive Tree Foundation held at the Sayeda Khadija Centre in Mississauga on Sunday, November 30.

“The Olive Tree Foundation is very pleased to be able fund this important project of Faith & the Common Good,” said Muneeb Nasir, President of the Olive Tree Foundation, in announcing the grant. “This project will build upon the trust of Faith communities in helping vulnerable people in our society with compassionate outreach.”

Faith & the Common Good will use the grant to study how faith communities can act as neighborhood resilience hubs during the next extreme weather event. The project will develop a model that can serve as a template for future community-based responses to extreme weather.

The overall objective is to learn and understand what makes a “good” community resilience hub, specifically, what criteria need to be in place, for a Faith community to be successful in caring for the vulnerable, in the case of extreme weather conditions.

“To date, we have interviewed 12 Faith communities, from different traditions and geographical locations, in the city of Toronto, and their willingness to participate in this project has been immediate,” said Dr. Lucy Cummings.  “The Olive Tree Foundation grant will allow us to engage and mentor youth members to help us analyze neighborhood extreme weather needs at each of the faith community sites.”

“We will also lead a workshop to teach the youth volunteers how to write and present a key findings report on the topic,” she added.

Faith & the Common Good (FCG) is an interfaith organization that helps faith communities make the connection between their faith and care for the environment.

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.

This article was originally published on IQRA.caon December 2nd, 2014.