♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jorge Francisco Castillo: I went to an event at the beach in Tijuana, then I saw the wall.

As I approached the wall, I saw some families on the American side, and one little kid handed me a bottle of water through the fence.

It was a beautiful moment.

That bottle of water meant so much.

It opened my mind and I thought it was a great place to have a Fandango.

Fandango is a musical celebration and fronterizo means border.

Half of the musicians will be on the American side and the other half in the Mexican side.

I mean, we're divided by this wall, but who cares?

We can do it.

Chrissy Arce: Music doesn't have any borders, and so I think that the fact that people are singing across borders is beyond symbolic.

Jorge: The element of this idea of Fandango, which is bringing people together, creating communities with our music, we can melt this wall that is dividing Mexico and the US.

♪♪♪ Dan Watman: Friendship Park is a space that was designated for cross border contact.

It's kind of a different narrative for our border instead of division and separation, it's one of union.

Nuria Rosa: I feel like it's very beautiful how the vision of the Fandango Fronterizo where it's, like, bringing together the two sides of the border and showing that we aren't actually so apart.

Jennie Reun: They go all night, play all night, take breaks, rest, eat, drink, sleep a little bit, and then go back.

One of the most beautiful things was seeing the sunrise.

Jorge: Traditionally, we have a tarima, which is a wooden dancing board that sits in the middle.

It's the heart of the Fandango.

Nydia Algazzali Gonzalez: Something beautiful about the experience of being in a Fandango is the connection.

You can be a silent observer and you're still part of the Fandango.

You could be a dancer, you wanna sing, do you wanna play?

Do you wana cook?

Do you wanna eat?

Do you wanna drink?

Like, everybody has a part and everybody's welcome.

Carlos Romero Ortega: All the music is kind of rhythm.

It touched you.

Once you hear it, you move some part of your body.

Carmen Chausse: I was very emotional when I saw those little kids playing the jarana, I got chills.

Jorge Ochoa: [speaking in foreign language] Dan: Attending the Fandango at Friendship Park from the American side is a beautiful experience.

It kinda makes the idea of, "You're Mexican and I'm American," disappear because we're all playing music together.

Angel Perea: [speaking in foreign language] Kelly Marc Gaspard: [speaking in foreign language] Angel Rodriguez: I come to this event here at the border to represent my culture as a Mexican American.

Carmen: With music we can make impact in our communities, and we need it.

♪♪♪ Nydia: The border wall means so much to me now.

That whole connection and separation of our two countries, both of which I belong now, it's very meaningful for me, this Fandango.

Jorge: There is a wall in the park that has a mesh that it's very tight.

You can hardly touch somebody through the fence.

In fact, we made our salute, we go high pinkie.

Nydia: The wall is there but the significance of this event is to say, "We see you, wall, we see your message, and we're still gonna play music together."

Carmen: After we started, like, singing and dancing, it was like that wall was not there.

♪♪♪ Carlos: When we have that event, Fandango Fronterizo, really, we forget about everything, about the problems, and we just enjoy the music.

Nydia: A very well known song is the song "La Bamba."

It'll be like no other "La Bamba" you've ever heard because it's our version today in this moment.

♪♪♪ [singing in foreign language] Jorge: The way the Fandango Fronterizo can build bridges within the two communities, basically through the music.

Nydia: I believe the significance of the Fandango Fronterizo specifically is that it's such an accepting and welcome genre in a physical place that is not accepting and welcoming of everyone.

To bring that oneness and connectivity to the wall, that I think is the significance to show that the wall may be there, but this cultural connection, this artistic experience, this connects us and we can't be separated.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Carmen: We saw the other friends at the other side of the border.

Part of, like, family.

You can be family with others, and that is the beautiful and good part of life.

Nydia: Arts, music, it's a great way to start conversations with people who might feel like, "We don't get along, we're different."

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jorge: Mexico's not gonna go anywhere and the US is not gonna go anywhere.

We're here.

The sooner we learn to live with each other and have interaction, and with our cultures, the better.

No matter how many walls they make, the birds are still gonna be able to fly through them and we believe the music's still gonna go through it.

Nothing can stop music.

♪♪♪ Trevor Ringland: Everybody says, "We don't want our children to go through what we went through."

My father was a police officer, and every time he started the car, he had to look under the car to check and see whether there was a bomb under the car.

And I remember talking to one paramilitant, and he said he didn't want a relationship with that other section of society because there was too much history.

And he turned to me.

He said, "Trevor," he says, "But I want my children to have one."

When a society goes through conflict, after that conflict is over, you have to try and undo the damage that's been caused.

They have to start to shape that future differently.

Gareth Harper: So in Northern Ireland, PeacePlayers on average works each year with around two and a half thousand kids.

The kids that we work with, the baggage, the sectarianism, the prejudice, which those guys hold has been learned, it hasn't been experienced, and some of the structures of our society continue to reinforce some of those divisions and those barriers so the education system, only 7% of our kids here attend integrated schools.

They live in separate areas, they attend separate schools, they play separate sports.

In Northern Ireland, PeacePlayers uses the neutral sport of basketball.

Some of the other sports that are played in Northern Ireland are associated with one side of the community or the other, either with the Catholic tradition or with the Protestant tradition.

So what we try to do with PeacePlayers on the basketball court is create a safe space where they can get to know each other.

When people come across people of different faith outside of the Catholic and Protestant traditions, a Jewish person will be asked traditionally in the street, "Ah, yes, you're Jewish, but are you a Catholic Jew or Protestant Jew?"

So people here like to push people back into their corners.

Paula McCurdy: I live on a Peace Line.

Peace Line is a physical barrier, and it just separates the Protestant state behind us from the Roman Catholic state of Ardoyne.

Sons and daughter are educated separately, because even our schools, they're still separated.

So without PeacePlayers, my children would not have the opportunity to mix with a Protestant.

Trevor: To have separate education is a nonsense in my view.

I think that we spend a lot of time undoing the damage that caused by educating our children separately.

Adam McCurdy: I've lived in a mainly Catholic area for the whole of my life.

Owen Linton: I live in a majority Protestant area.

We wouldn't have really had a chance to meet if it wasn't for PeacePlayers.

Gareth: The kids aren't just playing basketball together.

This program intentionally tackles the issues that continue to be divisive here.

female: Ladies and gentlemen, East Belfast are in the building.

Rachel Marchbank: Honestly, PeacePlayers is, like, basically gave me my best friend in the world.

female: We're ready to play some basketball.

Trevor: Those that learn to play together can live together.

It's really community relations using sport.

Gareth: It's creating new teams and the very simple idea is that if those teams are to be successful and they wanna be competitive and they wanna win games, they have to get on well with their new teammates.

Rachael Madden: Such an amazing experience to see the Catholic and the Protestant schools merging and just to be high fived.

Adam: The best thing about being on a team is being able to meet new people and learn about their beliefs and religions.

I've learned how to improve on my shooting and dribbling skills in basketball.

Jim Fitzpatrick: I mean, you look around, you'll see the kids getting involved, the energy, the excitement, and the fact that they're all mixing, learning not just some good basketball skills, but also learning all those kind of really important life skills, but how to get on with each other and how to live better in this place that they all call home.

Gareth: One of the great things about playing together on a mixed religion or a mixed background team is that conversations around things that can be divisive here happen naturally, and we actually try to facilitate some of those conversations.

Siobhan Slane: The coaching team take them under their wing, helping them understand prejudice, question themselves in terms of if they may have any prejudice.

Rachel: The number one rule is that everyone who's coming is going to respect everyone.

Sam Patterson: Every individual is different and every culture is different.

Gareth: We talk to kids about stereotypes, we talk to 'em little about prejudice, we talk to 'em about sectarianism, but we use sport as a lens for that.

Jayden Elliott: [speaking in foreign language] Good job.

Jayden: One of the core values of PeacePlayers would be seeing people as people.

We are all just people.

AJ Conlon: PeacePlayers, where I got to learn about other religions, I was constantly learning about the other side of the walls.

Rachel: We all believe different things, we all have different opinions.

PeacePlayers really taught me was that humanity in itself is a thing that we all have together.

Gareth: Share your identity with someone else and celebrate the diversity that exists rather than seeing somebody else's identity as a threat to yours which too much and too often happens here.

Yes, it's a basketball program, but it's actually a peace building and reconciliation program.

Siobhan: Basketball is what brought the children to it, but what's kept them there is the fact that they've made really good deep friendships with kids from right across the spectrum here.

Rachel: AJ was the first ever Catholic to come into my house basically and to be around our family.

But it's not different in lifestyle, it's not different in home, it's not different in the love that we share with our families, it's just a different label.

Paula: Actually, both grandparents, they didn't understand why I let Adam get on a bus and go to a Protestant area to play basketball with Catholics and Protestant kids.

Why can they not just play basketball here?

Gareth: What we try to do then through our young people is have them actually become champions for peace with their parents and with older generations.

Racheal Singleon: PeacePlayers itself allows them to be heard and to challenge what are, I think, a lot of very archaic norms that are still lingering.

Siobhan: It doesn't matter.

Their religion isn't important to the children, they don't care.

Racheal: I would honestly describe this experience as transformative.

Adam: I would like to see peace walls being taken down across the country so communities aren't physically divided.

Rachael: PeacePlayers has brought understanding, integration, communication.

It's just provided a tool to help us with bridging the divides.

Peace starts with me, peace starts with us.

We get to spread this message of peace among the world.

Trevor: We show what the future can be, we show how relationships can be built and PeacePlayers is one organization that shows that the future can be different.

Siobhan: The essence of PeacePlayers is bringing the communities together.

I just look at my children and my heart sings when I look at them.

So happy with it.

female: Make some noise if you think this is the lightest sermon ever.

Trevor: Nothing was achieved through violence that could not otherwise have been achieved through peaceful means.

People are different but you find a way of getting 'em to work together so that a society succeeds.

And an orchestra's probably the best example of that where you actually mold all those different musical instruments and musicians together and somehow make good music out of it.

Hatred doesn't work, friendship does.

female: We've brought in a new rule.

If the two referees and the table officials believe that either team did not have fun, the game does not count.

If there's no fun, there's no score.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Roberta Elliott: The Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom is an organization of Jewish and Muslim women who come together to establish relationships with each other under the belief that if you know someone, you can't possibly hate them.

Shirley Rosenbloom: I had this poster and it has a statement from the Talmud that says, "Anyone who takes the life, takes the entire world.

Anyone who saves a life, saves the world entire."

Our Muslim sisters said, "Oh, we say that same prayer."

Roberta: There was a Holocaust trip.

We were at Auschwitz and we had a ceremony there.

And at the end of the service, I was bawling.

I mean, I was just beside myself.

And Nazli came over and put her arms around me and gave me the biggest hug.

And at that moment, I knew the sisterhood was for me.

Nazli Chaudhry: I said, "I'm here to support my Jewish sisters."

Roberta: Then and now I get tears in my eyes and I get goosebumps and I was blown away.

Nadia Alam: There is not a Muslim that I know of in the United States that has not experienced some form of prejudice or hate.

Melanie Mages-Canale: My grandson was Bar Mitzvahed.

The week of the Bar Mitzvah, someone had distributed anti-Semitic flyers all up and down the area and the schoolyard.

How could people still be this way?

Anne Kjemtrup: So in Arabic, salaam means peace and it's our greeting, and it's the same root as the word of shalom.

So it really makes sense to have our organization Salaam Shalom, which is based on peace, to be named peace in both languages.

Lisa Breslau: Melanie and I met for coffee and we were kind of lamenting the state of our country and the state of our world.

Things felt so polarized and divisive, and it was depressing actually to see.

And Melanie started talking about something that she was learning about.

Melanie: I had first heard about Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, and I said, "I wanna bring this group here to Sacramento."

Lisa: She barely could finish and I said, "Yes."

That's something we need to do.

Melanie: We have six chapters in Sacramento.

Nazli: There's local chapters all over the United States, Canada, Germany, and UK.

Roberta: There's about 170 chapters.

Nazli: And each chapter has a equal number of Muslim and Jewish women.

Anne: We join because we know that you can't paint one group or the other with one paintbrush.

Lisa: I think one thing that we share very powerfully in common is that we really understand what it's like to be the other.

Anne: So being part of the sisterhood, it creates this awareness of other traditions.

Nadia: So much that we do in terms of customs that's, like, basically the same.

The Jewish people follow Kosher and Muslim people follow Halal.

Shereen Rehman: We do our charity, in Muslim, we call it sadaqa.

And I believe Jewish, they call it sadaqah.

And it means the same thing.

Melanie: It's doing for other people.

We've done Fill-A-Purse, a coat drive and where we're just giving back and it's the same thing in both cultures and we just do it together.

Anne: Our sisters who are part of this are some of the most radical peacemakers out there.

And who thought that, you know, potluck was radical peacemaking, right?

But it is.

♪♪♪ Anjum Keval: Joining this group has been really transformative for me.

You know, it's changed my perspective, honestly.

Perspective towards Judaism, towards Islam, what it means, there aren't very many differences I've noticed, there are so many similarities.

Claire Lipschultz: You only really learn in relationship with other people, and that's how you overcome misinformation, disinformation, and bigotry.

Is by breaking bread together, sharing life stories and really understanding each other's cultures and religion.

Nancy Wechsler: We've studied together, right, we've talked about what does Islam say about a topic, what does Judaism say about a topic, and I love that.

Nazli: I think one of the things that we can learn from the sisterhood is how we can work through our differences.

Durriya Syed: For me the most touched moment was when the first time we all opened to each other what Palestine and Israel means to us.

Anne: I have never had a conversation about Israel and Palestine with a Jewish person before, and I've learned so much, and I've broken some of my stereotypes.

And stereotypes not just among my Jewish sisters, but among my Muslim sisters too.

Durriya: When everybody shared everything, there was not a single person whose story didn't touch me or teared me up.

And I think that day my otherness was gone altogether with this group.

Nazli: Humans are meant to live in community, meant to live in harmony with each other, and when we find those bonds that strengthen us, we represent the best of humanity.

Lisa: We are mothers, and daughters, and sisters, and gone through every possible life cycle event together.

Jennifer Kaufman: Dancing and laughing at Fazaiah's son's wedding was just a remarkable night.

Ramen Sinaee: You know, we've gone through a lot of hardship, particularly the passing of our dear sister, Hayatt.

Shazia Keval: Really what has changed me the most is watching Lisa take care of Hayatt.

It was a sad moment, but just watching her do everything from her heart.

Lisa: The most basic way of thinking of humanitarianism, thinking of you all as family.

Anne: You can have your own identity and you can have your own faith, but that doesn't mean you need to live either in your own separate world or against somebody else.

Nazli: If each one of us just focused on doing what we can do to change our little world in whatever capacity, in whatever skills we have, then this world will be a better place.

Fawzia Keval: Don't believe everything that's out there.

You know, have the courage to go and meet somebody that's marginalized, that's from a different faith or a different ethnic background, whatever.

Get to know them at a personal level.

Nazli: We try to stand out for any community that's the target of hate and bigotry.

Together, we are stronger and together we make each other better.

Durriya: I crave to be with my Jewish sisters.

I mean, this is highlight of it.

I have I think probably since 2016, the most hugs and kisses I've exchanged is with you guys, okay, and that's a treasure to me.

Nadia: I think the sisterhood is a great model for what humanity can accomplish if people just get to know each other.

We would have less prejudice, less discrimination, and less hate in the world.

Claire: What we do has ripples.

It all matters.

Melanie: We're not trying to change the world, we're just changing our world.

Fawzia: Oh, I think we are.

Anne: I think we are changing the world.

That's my goal, actually.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Micah Hendler: Jerusalem is a city that has been characterized by conflict for thousands of years.

Miriam Sharton: We have a chorus with Israelis and Palestinian kids together, while basically the region is at war.

Micah: The Jerusalem Youth Chorus is an Israeli-Palestinian youth music and dialogue project for the purpose of creating an alternative space for Israeli and Palestinian young people to be able to meet one another differently and then to use our music that we perform, spreading that reality as far afield as we can.

Shifra: There was an operation in Gaza, then there were rockets.

There was a siren during one of our rehearsals, and we actually went on break.

We ended up going down to the bomb shelter, like I was really scared and so when that kind of thing happens I'll get, like, panic attacks and I don't know what to do.

And someone actually started singing one of our songs and then we all joined in.

♪ I know you're scared ♪ ♪ and I'm scared too ♪ ♪ but here I am ♪ ♪ right next to you, ♪ ♪ you gotta put one foot ♪ ♪ in front of the other.

♪ Shifra: It's kind of like a group of Israeli-Palestinian youth who were singing songs for people who were scared in a bomb shelter in the middle of Jerusalem.

It was kind of like a really big moment.

Miriam: There's basically a war now, it's a terrible conflict.

There's going to be violence, there already has been violence.

They somehow can rise above that because they know each other as people.

♪♪♪ Micah: Yeah, the concert is definitely gonna happen.

I think the kids will show up.

♪ Don't you give up keep movin' on you got ♪ ♪ to put one foot in front of the other.

♪ Micah: We've sung in times of war before and we'll do it tomorrow.

♪ You got to put one foot in front of the other ♪ ♪ and lead with love.

♪ Miriam: Jerusalem just has a beautiful, diverse population, and I would like to see it celebrated rather than the diversity being the source of the conflict.

♪ And lead with love.

♪♪ Rasha: People are more aware to the fact that we all are living under the same umbrella, that we are sitting in the same city and we have no other choice but live together.

[singing in foreign language] Yasmeen: For me, I've always lived around only Arabs, but I didn't really get the chance to interact with the Jews or other people, we usually just see them.

But with this choir I was able to make friends and see a different perspective.

Rasha: The two sides of Jerusalem meet, interact, speak about, you know, cultural experiences and sing, sing together because music is universal language that definitely can bring people together.

[singing in foreign language] Yasmeen: We grew up on different ideas and we grew up on different beliefs.

This changed our mindsets but in this choir we learned that we can embrace more of our similarities than our differences.

Itay: It's not only about the music, it's about the interaction, the being together, and they're all kids, so they just have a good time together.

Rasha: Our children, his son and my daughter are building bridges of understanding.

Yasmeen: We rehearse once a week, every Monday for four hours.

Nadav: There is both singing and dialogue included.

Amer Abu Arqub: One of our new Palestinian singers, very suspicious about the whole process.

And the Jewish girls were sharing with us how the kids in their schools give racist statements.

And when I asked the Jewish girls, "How did you react and deflect to that?"

The other girl, she said, "I throw a chair to the girl who told me 'Death to Palestinians.'"

And for the Palestinian girl to hear this, suddenly she lit up.

And she felt seen and protected by her Jewish friends, and since then I have been seeing them engaging with each other.

Miriam: In the dialogue group, sometimes there are conflicts among the kids in their discussion, but that's why we have professional facilitators facilitating.

So things really are, you know, productive rather than being destructive.

male: With dialogue, we build true friendship between people.

[singing in foreign language] Shirfa: I think that it kind of taught me how to open up and really try to understand a different narrative.

[singing in foreign language] Rasha: It's also heartwarming for us as parents to listen to our kids singing in three languages, Arabic, Hebrew, and English.

Micah: We've had a lot of challenges with parents over the years who have not thought that what their child was doing was a good thing at all.

Sometimes just say like, look, just come to a concert and see for yourself.

What we're doing in the Jerusalem Youth Chorus is really trying to leverage that same holiness of the city that so many people share ironically, to bring them together in harmony.

♪ I will be your standing stone.

♪ Rasha: Jews and Arabs, you know, live just blocks away from each other and don't have the chance to interact in such frameworks.

♪ I will be your standing stone.

♪ Miriam: Everybody is in the same place, is respected and is valued.

male: The chorus doesn't change your identity.

Itay: The choir, it's like an enclave.

You have to be proactive in creating such opportunities.

If you don't build it, it won't happen of itself.

[singing in foreign language] [singing in foreign language] Mary: Being in the choir, you learn things, not just music that we like, like being peace.

Dahlia: Also, you can be surprised at how much you have in common with other people.

Mary: Yes, I agree.

Itay: The combination of music and opportunity to meet people from, you know, not from his close environment in this group caught him and is-- Rasha: Magic.

Itay: Yeah.

Micah: It really is possible to meet one another on different levels.

What the chorus shows is that really just by starting from a place of listening, musical listening, and also deep conversational listening and then moving to self-expression that a lot can change.

Yasmeen: We're giving an example and we are being sort of role models for people to show that we can have peace and we can work together and not always be in conflict or argue.

Nadav: The ying and yang on the back on the wall, it represents us completing each other, yes.

Shirfa: It shows us that there can be a different kind of future, it shows that with enough respect, and time, and dialogue.

male: The music is the solution that we should use more and more in life because music is a great thing, could bring people together.

Shirfa: I don't think we can say that we, you know, we're gonna change the world tomorrow, but I think that it's about making those meaningful connections and really starting the ripple effect of what that will do and I think that we're already seeing it now.

Changes can be made and people can come together and people can have those important conversations.

male: And this is a message to Jerusalem where this model is working.

Our existence is a big hope for the future.

Shirfa: I agree.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Rebecca Morello: There's a lot of reasons not to be hopeful.

The planet is on fire.

People don't seem to get along that well.

This is an opportunity to find some aspects of hope.

Wendy Goldberg: The Tri-Faith Initiative is the only experiment of its kind in the world where a church, a mosque, and a synagogue with an interfaith center have come together with intention to model what peaceful coexistence can be.

Tamir Ayad: My wife is a Christian and I'm Muslim.

She actually attends here Countryside and I attend the mosque.

She goes that way and I go that way and we meet back at the car.

Maryanne Stevens: My thoughts when I first heard about Tri-Faith were how wonderful to have Christians and Muslims and Jewish people on the same piece of ground, attempting to be in relationship with one another.

Brian Stoller: Well, I think Tri-Faith has a lot to teach the world about understanding people who are different from us.

Sally Elatta: I had an experience one time where I was in a workshop and all of my fellow leaders that were in that workshop, one of them said something very negative about Islam because they didn't know I was a Muslim and I reacted and I had to say, please, you know, I cried.

I was very emotional and I said, "Please give me a chance to explain to you who we are as people.

Don't judge us based on what you see on TV."

Because of that session that I had and because he knew that I was a Muslim and he got to know me and he got to know my family, his views on Muslims changed.

Laura-LeeI Needelman: I moved furniture with somebody I didn't know who was Islamic and with an attitude and he didn't like Jews.

So we just, we talked probably for a half an hour, you know, I said, well, you know, I'm Jewish.

And so we just had, you know, a talk that opened some doors and opened some windows and it was amazing 'cause you get to know your own religion better by having these conversations.

Brian: It's easy to make stereotypes feel distant from people who are not like us or cast dispersions on them when we don't know them.

Wendy: My partners at Temple Israel came to me and said, "What do you think of this idea of us creating a neighborhood and looking for land together with Abrahamic partners?

Would you be open to that kind of bold experiment?"

I said, "Yes."

Aryeh Azriel: Many years ago, Jews were not allowed to join country clubs in Omaha, Nebraska.

We came to this place which was a Jewish golf place.

We decided it would be a good place to build a space that will encompass three different kind of buildings.

One Muslim, one Christian, one Jewish.

Wow, this is something that we can do in Omaha, Nebraska.

And of course we had a lot of naysayers at those days.

We don't have them now.

[praying in foreign language] Karim Khayati: Have we had some challenges as it relates to hate or things like that?

Of course, and it's not new but those things will not stop us from what we're trying to achieve.

Rebecca: Some congregation members ultimately left because it was too much.

It was too far outside of what they were, had the capacity to believe, and there were some people who left because of fear.

Aryeh: We are Jewish, what do we wanna do with Muslims?

Christians, why do we need Arabs here?

Muslims, the Jews have Israeli flag on the stage.

How do we do the Israeli flag in our understanding of who we are?

Those are early questions that needed to be asked.

Some of them were asked from angry people that didn't want to see us coming together.

Rebecca: And then we had the opportunities to meet, you know, kind of smash some of those ideas up.

Aryeh: We saw the God inside of their hearts.

Aubrey Fitzke: People were not expecting this type of environment where people can worship their own faith, follow their own faith but yet be in neighbors with each other.

Wendy: Fear can only be overcome through people hearing someone else's story.

That's the magic of us honoring the humanity.

Brian: Tri-Faith is really built on this premise that by spending time together with people who think differently, and believe differently, and come from different backgrounds, we get to know them and we gain understanding and that enriches the world.

John S: The concept of the Tri-Faith is bridging people and religions not to, you know, emphasize one religion or another.

We don't proselytize our religion, but we learn about the other religions, and that's actually deepened our own faith.

Deb McCollister: This was not a blending of faith, it was an opportunity to each deepen our own path by learning from others.

Karim: It is possible to come up as people with different faith group, different ethnic background, and intentionally be neighbors.

male: I'm a Christian and when we came here to Omaha, we were looking for a community church.

We joined Countryside approximately 17 years ago.

I looked at it as a great opportunity for us to just to learn about each other.

Sally: You'll see a lot of that here in Tri-Faith, is that they're very open to learning, to acknowledging and to respecting the other religions around them.

We just had a celebration here at the mosque after our Ramadan prayer and they provided us with chocolates and sweets and they said, [speaking in foreign language] Aryeh: We have been engaged in learning about the history of Islam, the history of Christianity, the history of Judaism, Sidra Fahad: The values we hold, our ethics are very similar and we all have the same belief about worship, family, the values we hold, and we all want to leave this world a better place.

Jeremy Fricke: We need to be able to uphold what makes us human, but also we should recognize my life is different from yours and that can be beautiful and that can be respected and it can be something that adds value to our community.

Deana Sussman Berezin: And we're going into each other spaces to worship.

[singing in foreign language] And then come together for a meal.

And so you have a taste of the religious experience and then you have a taste of the food that make each religion, each faith tradition special.

Laura-LeeI: I decided I would see what's possible in building a Tri-Faith library.

We are people of the book.

We all have books, we all value books.

The library here now looks fantastic.

It's been a delight to and a challenge to work on that.

Joe Gerstandt: There's beautiful things that happen here.

There's these groups that come together and they come together around music, and they come together around food and art and gardening that otherwise wouldn't cross paths.

female: You are so good at this.

female: I don't know when I would've met them.

female: You're right.

all: We are friends now.

female: All of this food is shared with people who need food.

female: Let's put 'em just a little bit farther apart here.

Karim: Islam, it has the spiritual aspect, it has the ritual aspect, but there is a lot of social aspect that comes with that and really they all evolve about being a good person.

Rebecca: And the things that we do is to keep engaging our communities to be culturally sensitive and to be present for one another, you know, outside of those times where oh, there's been a hate crime, so let's go do something, right?

We can also be present when it's, you know, Wednesday or Tuesday, right?

Maryanne: Tri-Faith is a symbol that people with very Maryanne: Tri-Faith is a symbol that people with very together and be in relationships of kindness and generosity.

Wendy: If what we are doing only happens in Omaha, Nebraska, it is good, but if we are able to invite people beyond these three traditions to a very big tent globally, then what we are doing is great.

Maryam Amini: As a mother, I have two children, right?

Both of my children are so different from each other, so imagine if there's different religions.

So you accept your children that they're different.

So the same thing, accept other people as who they are.

Rebecca: To realize that you can have your beliefs and somebody else can have theirs and it's okay.

♪♪♪ Judy Hanson: Chicago is a very segregated city and always has been.

We talk about race as being a divisive factor and we know that socioeconomics are really a dividing factor.

Some areas are homogeneous, like we're living in different cities but it's really one city, and we're living in different communities.

Josephine Lee: Our choir is playing a very powerful role in bridging that divide.

♪ We shall overcome.

♪ Judy: Chicago Children's Choir was founded at the height of the civil rights movement in 1956 to bring diverse youth together through music.

♪ We shall overcome.

♪ Josephine: We're creating this utopia.

The kids get to meet people from all walks of life.

We provide choral music education in over 90 Chicago schools, we have 12 neighborhood choirs, and then we have two citywide choirs.

[singing in foreign language] Judy: Our kids come together each week in rehearsals.

They sing together, they learn culture, they learn history.

male: Good.

Got it?

Sit down.

The country is what?

students: South Africa.

male: Good.

The language is Xhosa.

Everybody say it twice, Xhosa.

Again.

students: Xhosa.

Raiva Lessing: It's an amazing experience to come together with people of different backgrounds.

Choir has introduced me to different people and different cultures that I would never be exposed to.

Albert Kerelis: My grade school and my communities were all predominantly White.

I knew, like, almost no Black kids before I was in choir.

Now I have, you know, really close friends from all over the city.

Brian Gorman: So, last Paint the Town Red.

Amina Gorman: Yeah.

Brian: How you feeling?

Amina: It's kind of like, sad but like at the same time I get to go on stage, so that makes it better.

Brian: But I know that was, like, always part of one of your dreams is to be on that stage.

Amina: My favorite thing about being in the choir is the connections that you make with other people.

There are so many different faces and people throughout the choir and yet we all love music.

I think that's what's, like, really important about the choir.

Whitney Shurtliff: Paint the Town Red is the only concert of the year where all 5,000 members of the Chicago Children's choir sing together.

We're all in Millennium Park.

It's a great opportunity to connect with all of the members of the choir who come from every zip code of Chicago.

Judy: Good morning.

We are trying to make a more harmonious world, aren't we?

We are uniting all of our voices and trying to get to that goal.

Now, why music?

Everyone put your hand on your heart.

This is our common humanity.

We all feel music.

That's why we're here today.

♪♪♪ Judy: All right, we're gonna go to Korea.

male: When you're in Korea and you're feeling good, you say, [speaking in foreign language] Judy: It's one thing to talk about being together, it's another thing to rehearse and feel together and connect with one another on a very deep level.

Aidan Chung: Being able to sing Adidang today was incredible for me because I grew up with that song.

To be able to share music that's so meaningful to Korea, music that my grandparents would sing to me, it was like sharing a piece of me with the audience.

Rishi Chandra: When we sing songs from different cultures, we talk about the meanings and then we also learn how to apply those meanings to problems we have today.

Whitney: We share a lot in choir.

We have a lot of deep discussions about our lives and about music, and it connects us.

[singing in foreign language] Whitney: Good morning, everyone.

I'm a senior in Voice Of Chicago and I'm so happy to be here with all of you at Paint the Town Red.

Throughout my 10 years in the choir, it has been a safe space for me and has given me the courage to tackle difficult times, and I'm so happy that I get to spend my last Paint the Town Red with the youth of Chicago who are going to make the world a better place.

[singing in foreign language] Whitney: I grew up in a very religious family and I kind of learned about the world through that lens.

I learned a lot of the rules and how to look at people through my religion and I often felt that I didn't fit into that community.

But when I came to the choir, I realized that our experiences were very similar and that we all have instances in our lives where we don't belong in a certain community.

Diondre Dunigan: Growing up as a Black queer person, I see the world in a very different way than my peers do, and I have had my own experiences with being profiled racially and because of my sexual orientation.

And so coming to the choir, it really feels like a place where I can vent about those issues, a place where we can raise awareness about those issues, and it's not something that others me, but instead it's something that is celebrated.

It's a part of my identity that is accepted because I am the way that I am.

[singing in foreign language] Whitney: The choir, that's how I learned to accept myself for everything that I am and also accept other people for everything that they are.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Delaiah Sneed: I think having a program like this where people from different areas come together and just sing, it really changes how you think about the world.

It makes you say, "Man, maybe there is some good out there."

♪ Jesus loving, coming all together to thank the Lord.

♪ Josephine: I think the CCC is a blueprint for how we can all coexist peacefully.

And it's not only about the children, it's about the community, it's about their families, it's about the ripple effect of putting positivity back into the country and our city.

♪ Coming, coming all together to thank the Lord.

♪ Josephine: If you open their eyes to the possibilities, to all the worlds, the world histories about life, culture, languages, you solve so many issues, you know, because all of a sudden you have enlightened body of people that are out there.

♪ Jesus loving, coming all together to thank the Lord.

♪ Josephine: We understand that there's so much respect that comes from singing with someone that doesn't have the same religion, or socioeconomic background, or gender, whatever it is, it doesn't matter.

female: Even if we all look different, even if we all act different, even if we don't speak the same language, we all share a heartbeat.

♪ Thank the Lord.

♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪