By: Eleanor Peck, Director of Communications and Member Relations
Happy New Year from all of us at the Niagara Foundation! We hope your holidays were filled with love, joy, and happiness. Although we don’t prescribe to the “I will lose 20 lbs” type of New Year’s resolution, we absolutely believe in the power of reflecting on the year past and contemplating what we can do better next year.
Below are our New Year’s Resolutions. Things we are looking forward to working on and hope to accomplish in 2014. Some of these ideas are already in the works and others are pipe dreams.
Since 2014 is our 10 year anniversary, we’re making a 10 year anniversary video with some of our friends to celebrate, as well as planning a gala later in the year. We can’t wait to share more information as soon as it becomes available.
The Center for Public and Global affairs hopes to bring in new and interesting speakers this year with a greater focus on providing a space to discuss policy amongst researchers and institutions that represent a wide spectrum of ideological perspectives. As Director Aleksa Hacker says, “We believe the realization of international peace is made possible through the improvement as well as the establishment of institutions of dialogue.”
The Center for Cultural Exchange and Interfaith Collaboration will be expanding the Abraham’s Tent dinners across the midwest, and Director Brendan Dowd specifically “hopes to broaden our partnerships with other interfaith institutions in the city and provide more fresh and stimulating programming for people interested in learning about other faith traditions.”
The Center for Academic Affairs hopes to expand the successful Study Turkiye program to all our Midwest chapters in 2014, as well as help academics and universities learn more about the Hizmet movement and Turkey in general.
As for the communications department, I am looking forward to a year with guest blog contributors on subjects ranging from Chicago politics to religious pluralism. We’re also going to publish our first annual report and I am truly hoping to get Niagara podcasts off the ground.
What were your New Year’s Resolutions this year? We’d love to hear about them in the comments…