OMNIA Leadership Summit Attendee, working in the U.S. and West Africa to build sustainable, purposed-based communities.
In the U.S.
Over the past 40 years, OMNIA’s predecessor (SCUPE) has trained thousands of seminary students who minister in some of the most challenging environments around the world.
Today, OMNIA’s Leadership Summits train participants to build power using the wide diversity in their communities for effective action. Summits are held in Chicago, twice a year in April and October. To date, 65 of these leaders are engaged in powerful, collaborative, and impactful projects in their own communities, from Chicago and Charlotte to Washington, DC.
This year OMNIA is introducing one-day mini-training events in cities around the country. These introductory events offer communities a way to explore our training model as a possible solution for their communities' needs.
OMNIA also conducts Advanced training events that train participants to teach these principles to their congregations and organizations. Participants who complete these trainings, participates in an immersion and engages in an approved community project may qualify for certification as an OMNIA Leader.
OMNIA President confers with Chief of a Northeast Region of Nigeria about the challenges that Boko Haram poses for the villages and cities in Gombe State.
Around the World
400+ Muslim and Christian Clergy Leaders in Northeastern Nigeria have been trained by OMNIA. In Northeastern Nigeria, where Boko Haram, one of the World’s deadliest terrorist groups is active, OMNIA'S leadership training has equipped Muslims and Christians: clergy, community leaders and government officials collaborate across religions, blunting the efforts of extremists to drive a wedge between the two religions.
In and around the city of Gombe, more than 30 small groups of Muslims and Christians are working together in effective and powerful actions towards peace.
OMNIA has also trained hundreds of clergy leaders in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, with an emphasis on issues of women's empowerment, eradicating extremism, and cooperative community building.
OMNIA President Shanta Premawardhana delivers an address at Kirchentag, in Berlin, 2017 - a conference attended by more than 100,000 Christian clergy and laypersons. There he called for a "new reformation" rooted in religious pluralism and a renewed commitment to the needs of those living in the margins.
Thought Leadership
From Berlin to Bangladesh and across the United States, OMNIA questions faulty theologies, and religion’s collusions with power structures that have led to xenophobia, racism, injustice and violence. OMNIA challenges leaders to deconstruct such empire-based top-down theologies, and to reconstruct bottom-up theologies based on the questions of struggles of the people in the margins. Based on the motto, Listening to, Learning from, and Living in Deep Solidarity with those in the Margins, OMNIA challenges religious institutions and trains its leaders to live out the two cardinal principles of authentic religion: to Love God, and Love their neighbor.
Women's March, 2017
On the Front Lines
Whether at massive Women's Marches, standing in solidarity with the oppressed, or in private meetings with political and religious leaders to plan strategies for community transformation, OMNIA is on the front lines of change for a more just world. Our commitment to social justice takes us to conflict zones in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa as well as to the streets of Chicago. But our goal is clear - to build leadership capacity to handle those conflicts with measurable and effective outcomes.
