We offer education, research, consulting, and program evaluation about civic religious literacy to:
To see the variety of groups we work with and the offerings we provide, check our engagements page.
Each educational/professional development program is designed to the regional, topical, and industry needs of our clients, based on our unique framework that considers regional, topical, and industry-based knowledge.
In this approach, we work alongside community leaders, elders, and Knowledge Keepers in local communities to develop and deliver our programming.
Using a consulting-like approach, each program follows a 3-step process, where we assess your needs, design an appropriate program for you, then share it with your students/staff.
This approach is based on our research.
Our research shows that societal support is needed to encourage the understanding of religious literacy at all levels. As a result, we offer educational and professional development programming to foster civic religious literacy to the many parts of society that influence it.
If you would like to learn more about our programming, please contact info@ccrl-clrc.ca for an introduction package.
All our work aims to develop civic religious literacy across all sectors by:
- Ensuring that all staff are educators (in and outside of schools) – As we are educators ourselves, we have taught in Canada and internationally, enabling us to connect world affairs and people to those in Canada.
- Maintaining research based approaches – As academics who aim to share, relate, and apply our research, we will base our programming on assessed and evidence-based approaches.
- Including local voices – We recognize the unique characteristics of each province and territory. Our Regional Directors by province, Board of Directors representation across Canada, and partnership with local religious, spiritual, and non-religious community groups will help us address contextual nuances in the programming we offer.
- Offering multilateral programming – We aim to provide industry and role specific training, e.g. for local police officials, teachers, health professionals, religious leaders, and the general public, in order to foster religious literacy throughout the Canadian society as our research has shown that religious illiteracy in one sphere of society can inhibit the promotion of religious literacy in another.
- Fostering dialogue – In all our programming, we strive to offer opportunities where individuals can dialogue with one another, whether through guest speakers or sharing of individual narratives via web-conferencing, among other avenues. Through dialogue, we aim to foster understanding and space for relationship formation so that an understanding of religious literacy is a long term and engaging process, and not one based on the transmission of content knowledge and “meeting and visiting” in a single occasion.
But why civic religious literacy and not cultural competency in general?
Based on 4 reasons:
For more details behind each reason, visit the “Why civic religious literacy?” page.