Requests should be made to Bernice Suplee (631-665-7033 or jbsuplee@aol.com). Arvind Vora (avora@optonline.net) would be happy to negotiate details with you, but please let Bernice know what you have already figured out, such as:

• Would you like us to do a training for your staff before the Festival? Teachers often need a chance to learn something more themselves about the faiths of their neighbors and how to teach difficult religious topics. We are happy to do panel presentations for PTA meetings and similar groups before the Festival.
  
  
• Who is the contact person? Daytime and evening phone numbers? Fax number or email?
  
  
• What grade level is the audience? How many students? Some schools combine two or three classes for each panel presentation, which works well, but we find it is best not to shoehorn a large number of students at the same time into the gym or library where we will have displays and demonstrations.
  
  
• What location, day and time do you want? Please do not ask when we are available: tell Bernice your preferred date and she will let you know if this conflicts with a previously-scheduled presentation. Please allow two months for us to recruit volunteers for an all-day Multi-Faith Festival, longer for a two-day festival - and it is best to schedule the two days over a weekend. Due to travel time, many faiths cannot be represented before 9:00 a.m. If you want an all-day festival, you should plan on either having only a few faiths represented during first period or do something else for first period, such as showing our Faiths of Long Island, our 30-minute DVD. Remember that the date you pick may affect which faith communities can come if it conflicts with a major religious holiday. Calendars can be found at: www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/calendar or www.interfaithcalendar.org.
  
  
• When can we get into the gym or library to set up table displays? We need at least half and hour to unload materials and set up the displays. Our elderly volunteers also will need help from staff or students to haul display materials to and from their cars.
  
  
• When will there be breaks for the volunteers to eat? We will need some food, coffee, water, etc. in the gym or library where our volunteers will have their table displays and demonstrations. Since we often bring valuable artifacts for the display tables, you need to arrange security during the lunch break.
  
  
• Please allow plenty of time for students to visit table displays, rather than shuffling students around rapidly. Anything less than 10 minutes per faith community leaves students with no time to ask the questions that matter to them. It has been our experience that it is better to allow students to learn in some depth rather than receive many shallow exposures to diverse traditions. It is good to encourage students to visit more than one display-which some teachers do by creating a "treasure hunt" that requires them to get answers from multiple faith communities-but if you want students to be exposed to ten or eleven faiths, you need a double period. Some teachers require their classes to visit the displays of faiths that were not represented in the panel discussion for that class. Others ask each student to learn something about two or three faiths and then share what they learned with others. One teacher recently numbered off her class so that they would be evenly distributed among the tables and could better share what they learned, without every student needing to race to every table.
  
  
• At what times do you want us to present our panel discussions, which we call "Building Bridges"? We strongly urge you to schedule these panel presentations as well as table-top demonstrations of religious artifacts. The length of time available will determine how many speakers we have in each panel. Please note, too, that we find it hard to convey anything meaningful in less than 40 minutes. Our experience has been that students learn best if they see our video "Faiths of Long Island" before the Festival, hear a Building Bridges panel discussion, and then interact with volunteers in the library with table-top demonstrations.
  
  
• Are there particular topics you want panelists to cover? We avoid politics and foreign policy, and our panelists are not professional theologians, but they can address a wide variety of questions about how they practice their faith in the daily lives, such as the religious holidays they celebrate, what they want their neighbors to know about their customs and beliefs, and how to get along with one another in our increasingly diverse communities. Do you want them to tell what they have learned from their tradition about tolerance? Discrimination? Health and sickness? Dating? Marriage? Managing money? The best questions, of course, are the ones that are important to the students, so please encourage them to ask whatever they want to ask rather than what their teacher may want them to ask. The LIMFF teaches about religion, which the Supreme Court has upheld and encouraged, and does not proselytize. At the end of this message, you will find the guidelines we expect all our members to follow. Several school district administrators and their lawyers have reviewed our guidelines, and we would be glad to have yours do the same. The LIMFF also teaches respect for doubt and skepticism. Several of our faith communities (such as Buddhism, Jainism, and Unitarian Universalism) welcome agnostics and atheists; many traditions within other communities have a place for doubt and skepticism.
  
  
• We have Baha'i, Brahma Kumaris, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Jewish, Muslim, Native American Spirituality, Sikh, and Unitarian Universalist volunteers. Please note that we will be sending representatives of diverse religious traditions, not members of particular ethnic groups. Hosts sometimes invite us to multi-cultural celebrations and are disappointed if our volunteers do not conform to the racial composition they were expecting: a Muslim may be from India and a Bahai may be from Brooklyn-which in itself breaks down stereotypes. We also strongly discourage you from mixing religious presentations with strictly cultural groups, such as an ethnic arts program, since this confuses students.
  
  
• Will classes be seeing our 30-minute DVD Faiths of Long Island before the Festival? We strongly urge this. It provides an overview of all the faith communities in the LIMFF, and we are sure you will want your own copy of this unique resource. Watching the DVD in advance can also help teachers and staff determine what topics they might like panelists to cover. If you cannot show the DVD a day or two beforehand, you might have each class view the video on the day of the festival before coming to the panel presentation or table displays. The suggested donation for the DVD is $30, plus $5 for shipping and handling. Checks can be sent to the LICC, 1644 Denton Green, Hempstead, NY 11550. Let us know if you need an invoice.
  
  
• What sort of room will we have for the table displays and demonstrations? We find that a gym or library is far more conducive to conversations with students than a hallway. We will need some chairs or cushions for students as well as two or three chairs at each table for our volunteers, and some room to move around. Each faith community should get an equal amount of space, to embody the respect for one another that we are trying to teach. Bernice Suplee will let you know of any particular needs we may have for display tables or demonstration areas.
  
  
• We do not allow any individual faith community to distribute literature in schools, but we have prepared a booklet with one-page descriptions of each of our faiths that have been reviewed and vetted by our faith communities and by a number of school officials. Studying this booklet in advance helps students and teachers to get more out of our presentation. It has been vetted by school officials and you are welcome to photocopy it.
  
  
• Who will send directions to Bernice for the panelists? Where should they park? We need several dozen parking spaces, an unloading area near the gym or library. Please make sure that your security staff know where we should unload and park.
  
  
• Who will help our volunteers unload materials and schlep them to the gym or library? Some of our volunteers are elderly and we really need students or staff to help haul materials for the displays.
  
  
• Are there forms we need to complete for funding? We expect at least $500 for an all-day Multi-Faith Festival and $900 for a two-day festival. Eastern & Western Suffolk BOCES has approved the LIMFF for funding, and school districts elsewhere have worked out BOCES funding, too. We would be glad to mail, email, or fax an invoice for the program. Checks can be made out to the Long Island Multi-Faith Forum and mailed c/o

  Long Island Council of Churches
  1644 Denton Green
  Hempstead, NY 11550

LONG ISLAND MULTI-FAITH FORUM REQUEST FORM