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Who We Are
The OMNIA Institute for Contextual Leadership trains religious and civil society leaders -- clergy and lay, women, men and young people -- to form Interfaith Peacemaker (IP) Teams. It trains them to collaborate across identities, build power, and act only on urgent, relevant, and winnable issues that arise from the ground in their communities, ensuring consistent victories.
OMNIA has trained over 8800 peacemakers and formed them into 440 IP Teams in 9 countries: Bangladesh, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Togo, Uganda and the USA. Each team has approximately 20 religious and civic leaders.
OMNIA was established in 1976 as the Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education (SCUPE). An organization of 12 Christian seminaries, it trained seminary students to take the context of the city seriously, and to build theologies from the bottom up. After 40 years of training thousands of pastors in contextual theologies and methods, SCUPE decided to take its learning to religious leaders across the world. With this expanded mission, in December 2016 SCUPE changed its name to OMNIA Institute for Contextual Leadership.
OMNIA’s Mission is as follows:
By 2027, OMNIA will train 20,000 peacemakers, and build 1000 Interfaith Peacemaker Teams in 12 countries, to effectively address contextual issues of justice and peace, on its way to becoming a powerful and effective peacemaking movement in the world.
OMNIA is governed by an 8-member independent Board of Directors. Each member has signed a statement declaring that they have no Conflicts of Interest. The board has adopted the following policies:
OMNIA Institute for Contextual Leadership is registered in the State of Illinois, USA, as a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation and operates under and by virtue of the laws of the State of Illinois. In seeking to be transparent in its finances and operations, OMNIA offers this link to its most recent IRS form 990 for public review.
OMNIA has received a Platinum Transparency rating from the nonprofit rating agency GuideStar.
Please click here to read the current Strategic Plan 2024-2027
