Notre Dame receives $10M for youth-serving initiatives
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SOUTH BEND, Ind. - The University of Notre Dame has received a $10 million grant from Lilly Endowment to strengthen faith-based service opportunities for youth and young adults and better understand their relationship with the church.
The funds will support a new Pathways To Communion program at the university’s McGrath Institute for Church Life. The effort will include research into the religious lives of youth as well as the development of a hub to support 10 partner organizations that provide youth service opportunities.
“The Church is one of the principal agents of service in this country and worldwide, yet there is no easy way for service organizations within the Church to form their people in a properly theological ideal of service. This grant will allow us to do precisely that,” institute Director John Cavadini said in a news release. “The McGrath Institute is well-positioned to respond to this need because of its access to the insights of leading scholars as well as its record of collaboration with dioceses and organizations across the nation.”
The institute will provide subgrants to the partner organizations to create or expand their programming. The organizations are Alive in You, Andre House of Hospitality, the Catholic Campus Ministry Association, the Diocese of Charleston, the Diocese of Helena, the Diocese of Honolulu, the Diocese of Orange, ESTEEM (a joint partnership between Leadership Roundtable and Saint Thomas More Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale University), Iskali and the McGrath Institute’s Notre Dame Vision program.
The organizations, meanwhile, will provide insights to university researchers examining the wants and needs of young adults. The research and the support hub are intended to complement and support each other, the news release said.
Over five years, the leaders of the 10 organizations will participate in gatherings on Notre Dame’s campus and receive on-site visits and guidance on improving their programming.
“You often hear people say that young people in the church today are rigorously committed to service as part of their religious lives. But we have to admit that we don’t quite know as much as we think about the religious lives of young people in the church today,” said Timothy O’Malley, associate director for research at the institute. “How do they pray? What’s the connection to service? How has COVID-19 changed their relationship to the church? These are the kind of questions that our research will take up, in a longitudinal project that includes quantitative and qualitative dimensions alike.”
Notre Dame was one of 12 organizations to receive funds through Lilly Endowment’s National Youth and Young Adult Initiative on Faith & Service.