Changing our community starts with learning how to change our selves first. As the fences, walls and boundaries that divide our world disintegrate daily, we search for a new way to live in our growing multicultural and interconnected world. This, I think is the central message of the Unity Walk; that we must create new ways of communicating across these lines of difference and start dialogue that takes us beyond the superficial sharing of what we have in common to the higher call of, what can we achieve together?

After three years of organizing the UW with so many concerned citizens, the "walk" has turned into a tradition for the DC community. Every month we gather for planning meetings at a different house of worship where planners set agendas, debate and dialogue on issues we choose to explore, on the speakers to be invited, on the program and we serve as a clearninghouse for people to stay active and invovled in service and community events.

Each meeting offers planners a venue to learn about a different religious tradition, to dialogue about issues of justice, peace and conflict resolution and to share their stories.

For me, the walk has really changed my life. From teaching myself how to build a website, to dealing with "high profile" politics of the religious leaders we have involved in the walk, to facilitating planning meetings with diverse community members, I've found my passion through this experience. What I've loved most about the Unity Walk is the sheer passion each faith community has brought to the planning table - this passion has been the cornerstone of our success.

The "walk" has existed as a labor of love - bringing dynamic public leaders to it purely based on it's core purpose and message... and we have refined this process, which started in 2005, almost spontaneously, when about 50 concerned community members came together at different houses of worship to plan the walk, envisioned in the spirit of MLKs civil rights walks and Gandhi's marches.

By this point, after three years of Unity Walks and thousands of people having come together in a spirit of peace and reconciliation, a vibrant planning community of well over 200 people has been formed, the Unity Walk has expanded to New York and we have gained international media attention. Most interesting is our street reputation, when I tell people about it, they typically say, "yeah I've heard of that..."

When we found out the Unity Walk had been selected to the top 100, our core planning team was ecstatic with joy, we began to meet nightly, going through countless revisions to the application and consulting as many people as we can...

Our vision is simple: we want to see the Unity Walk event and planning style exported to over a dozen new communities outside of Washington, DC and New York by 2009. We want to provide the resources, guidance and seed money to local partnering organizations to enable them to bring together diverse groups and organize a Unity Walk, which will culminate in a new 'Seasons of Service' from 9/11 to the birth of the United Nations on 9/21 - this idea I don't take credit for what so ever, in fact, it was created largely by our planning process, a testament to the power and creativity of our consensus driven planning.

The 'Seasons of Service' period would involve each faith community in the planning team to commit to a number of service projects, whereby they would lead and involve others from their local Unity Walk network in the act of serving their community.

Wish us luck!!