The Points of Light Foundation seeks to support a growing movement that connects people of faith to meaningful service in their community. Throughout the country, an emerging global community is waiting to blossom, a movement that engages citizens to face their differences through service to community. The role of faith-based organizations and religiously motivated service is an integral component to this growing movement.

This page is designed for volunteers, volunteer Centers, faith-based organizations and congregations to learn more about the intersection between faith and service, highlighting: opportunities for online networking, major organizations involved in faith and service and interviews of major service leaders from minority religious traditions.

We want to hear from you! Tell us your story, here.

Major Faith and Service Groups – check out these dynamic groups:

Faith and Interfaith

• Service for Peace
• Interfaith Calendar- Primary Sacred Times for World Religions
• The National Religious Partnership for the Environment
• Days of Interfaith Youth Service
• J-Serve
• Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh USA
• Jewish Coalition for Service
• American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
• Religions for Peace
• InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington
• United Religions Initiative
• Islamic Society of North America
• ISKCON
• Catholic Charities USA
• Episcopal Relief and Development
• Interfaith Youth Core
• Islamic Relief USA
• Food for Life
• United Sikhs

Profiles of Interfaith Service Leaders
This page highlights service leaders from different religious traditions who are making a tremendous impact on marginalized communities and responding to major disasters such as Hurricane Katrina." to a link reading "Click here to learn from religous service leaders who are making a tremendous impact on marginalized communities and responding to major disasters such as Hurricane Katrina" Upon clicking on the link the user should find the information listed below, which is currently on the same page as the description.

Gurvinder Singh, Executive Director

United Sikhs - Sikh
UNITED SIKHS is an international non-profit, non-governmental, humanitarian relief, human development and advocacy organization, aimed at empowering those in need, especially disadvantaged and minority communities across the world.

1. When you serve, how do you reach out to the community?
The basic tenets of Sikhism inspire us to reach out to people in need and provide them assistance. When we learn about a community in need either through the media, state agencies, or directly from the community, we send out our team of volunteers to the community. We usually provide services in the form of hot meals, drinking water and clothes or whatever is specifically required to alleviate the problem that has surfaced and impacted the community. We often cook food close to the place of distribution and if due to circumstance we can not then we transport cooked food to the distribution point.

2. Where do you find your volunteers?
To build a volunteer team we send out email requests to our vast group of subscribers, make announcements within the local community and even distribute flyers. Through the response we are always able to form a team willing to help with a humanitarian or human development project. The willing volunteers mostly register through a web based registration process on our website. Our volunteer coordinators assign tasks to the volunteers.

3. How did the United Sikhs respond to Hurricane Katrina?
The moment we heard about the death and destruction brought by Hurricane Katrina in the south-eastern part of country, UNITED SIKHS formed a relief team under the name GHANAIA (Giving Humanitarian Aid Necessities and Assistance Impartial to All).

UNITED SIKHS' GHANAIA team worked closely with US authorities and FEMA to assess the situation. After a ground assessment by our team, we opened our command center in Baton Rogue, LA and dispatched teams of volunteers comprising of rescue experts, medical professional, cooks, trauma counselors, media photographers and general volunteers.

Each day our volunteers cooked hot meals for over 1300 people in five different shelter homes. Apart from food, we supplied evacuees with medical aid, clothes, blankets, drinking water, baby food, hygienic supplies, radios, calling cards, Walmart gift cards, baby toys, etc.

Paul Turner, Director

Food for Life Global - Hindu

Since its inception in the early 70's, Food for Life has tried to liberally distribute sanctified vegetarian meals throughout the world with the aim of creating peace and prosperity. FFL's volunteers currently serve more than 450,000 free vegetarian meals daily to shelters, schools, prisons, disaster areas, and from mobile kitchen trucks.

Food for Life volunteers are made up of ISKCON members, vegans, vegetarians, and the socially conscious public. Food for Life Global, the headquarters of the Food for Life projects, is non-sectarian and welcomes anyone to participate in their community projects.

1. When you serve, how do you reach out to the community?
We believe strongly in the power of food to not only transform, but to nurture the soul and bond people. Our Hindu origins teach us of the equality of all beings. That is the main reason why we prefer only to serve vegetarian meals. Our motto is to "Unite the World Through Food." Food speaks all languages, and so our service is always relevant and always welcome wherever we are in the world.

2. Where do you find your volunteers?
Most volunteers learn about us through the Internet and through community events we participate in to raise awareness. However, Food for Life is always in need of volunteers and we welcome anyone, just as long as they can honor our belief in the importance of a vegetarian diet.