Q: I am very interested in starting an interfaith alliance group in San Diego where we have recently had some hate crimes. Any support you can give me will be greatly appreciated.

R: There already seems to be some active interfaith organisations in San Diego. Maybe you would like to check them out first.

San Diego Dialog Society: www.sandiegodialogsociety.org
San Diego Interfaith Alliance: www.interfaithalliance.org
San Diego Interfaith Housing Foundation: www.sdihf.org

Joining one of the existing San Diego initiatives you might meet there like-minded persons willing to work with you on the particular focus that concerns you. They might already have funding and local faith connections that could save you a lot of time and energy so you could get straight to the point quicker.

If you still want to start up your own group the best way to begin is to create some kind of vision leaflet and go round to as many faith communities as possible with it, meet people there, find out what interests them and invite their participation at an inaugural think tank meeting. Always, the best way to get started is to meet others, listen, dialogue and move forward together.

Be mindful that when you visit local faith minorities interfaith may not be top of their action agenda - many have other issues affecting them. And if they are already subject to local incidents they might not want to raise their heads further above the parapet. Building trust together takes a lot of time, patience, understanding and commitment but it's well worth it, a wonderful thing.

Although you are based in the States, the Inter Faith Network of the UK has some useful leaflets that can be downloaded from their website about building good relations and other relevant matters: www.interfaith.org.uk. I'd like to especially recommend you download the Looking After Each Other publication on their website as it addresses the kind of situation that has moved you to do something and shows, I think, how useful it would be to also get local police, councils, businesses etc involved in the dialogue process.

Nearer to home the Pluralism Project can probably help with some useful ideas - www.pluralism.org - and Scarborough Missions in Canada also have some useful download materials: www.scarboromissions.ca/Interfaith_dialogue/index.php

Even closer to you, the Interfaith Center at The Presidio in San Francisco might be a good resource - www.interfaith-presidio.org - and also, perhaps, depending on the focus you hope to establish, the Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace in Pasadena, Los Angeles: www.icujp.org

An international organisation based in San Francisco which has lots of good experience at being locally rooted and globally connected is the United Religions Initiative: www.uri.org. You can start a local cooperation circle linked to URI and be part of a big world-wide family. Details of how to do this are on URI's website.