Building Bridges

1 October 2010
a group photo

Escuela de Amor CC | Latin America and the Caribbean Region

In the chapel of a Catholic school in Buenos Aires, Argentina, beside a massive crucifix, an Indigenous woman named Rosalía Gutierrez began to dance. Around the altar and through the chapel she went, regaling the audience with graceful movements from her native culture. A long-time URI member, Rosalía was there to share her Indigenous tradition as part of an International Day of Peace celebration put on by the Escuela de Amor Cooperation Circle, a group of Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders. Every year Escuela de Amor visits schools all around Buenos Aires to teach children about religious diversity in this majority-Catholic country. In 2009, it won a grant from the U.S. State Department to expand this work to universities through the Bridge Builders program, bringing college students of different faiths together to learn from one another and collaborate on community service projects.