The United Religions Initiative (URI) is the world’s largest grassroots interfaith network, dedicated to promoting daily cooperation, ending religiously motivated violence, and cultivating cultures of peace, justice, and healing. Through its global network of locally led groups known as Cooperation Circles, URI empowers people of diverse religious, spiritual, and cultural backgrounds to work together for the common good.

Mission and Vision

URI’s mission is to engage people across religions and cultures to work cooperatively for peace, justice, and healing of the Earth and all living beings. Its vision is a world where communities are connected across difference, where diversity is embraced as a strength, and where collaboration replaces conflict as the primary response to shared challenges.

URI is grounded in the belief that peace is built locally and relationally. By supporting grassroots leadership and cross-cultural collaboration, the organization fosters trust, mutual understanding, and sustained action rooted in shared ethical values.

Core Areas of Work

URI’s work spans more than 100 countries and includes:

• Interfaith and intercultural cooperation at the community level
• Peacebuilding and conflict transformation
• Environmental stewardship and climate justice
• Youth leadership and intergenerational engagement
• Human rights, gender equity, and social inclusion

Through its decentralized model, URI ensures that solutions are locally relevant while remaining globally connected.

Relationship to the Charter for Compassion and Charter 2.0

The work of URI is deeply aligned with the mission of the Charter for Compassion, particularly in its commitment to honoring diversity, fostering interdependence, and translating shared values into collaborative action. This alignment becomes especially powerful within the framework of Charter 2.0, which emphasizes capacity-building, partnership, and systemic impact.

Charter 2.0 calls for compassion to be practiced across boundaries—religious, cultural, political, and ideological. URI contributes to this vision by:

• Modeling cooperation across difference at scale
• Supporting grassroots initiatives that embody compassion in action
• Strengthening interfaith and intercultural dialogue grounded in lived experience
• Expanding the Charter’s reach through its vast global network
   

Within the Compassion Transformation Institute, URI brings essential expertise in interfaith collaboration and grassroots peacebuilding, demonstrating how compassion can serve as a shared moral language across traditions and cultures. Together, URI and the Charter for Compassion affirm that compassion is a unifying force—capable of bridging divides, healing communities, and fostering a more peaceful and interconnected world.