The Interfaith Center awarded two UNF seniors the first Noor Inayat Khan Interfaith Community Service Scholarship for significant voluntary interfaith community service, according to the press release.

The award and scholarship is one of the first interfaith community service scholarships offered by a college or university in the United States, according to the Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core.

The recipients are Kalilah Jamall, a senior sociology major, and Clare Stern, a senior health science major. Both are from Jacksonville. Each will receive a $500 tuition scholarship and a commemorative award.

“Being an interfaith leader, for me, is creating opportunities to witness change within people that leads to opening minds and hearts,” Jamall said.

Jamall has hosted several difficult conversations on meaningful topics with civil, respectful discourse, according to UNF’s press release. She has promoted stories of marginalized and minority groups through activism and outreach events.

Stern served on the “Better Together at UNF” campaign, the President’s Interfaith Community Service and The Campus Challenge on Humanizing Homelessness, according to the UNF press release.

“When we embrace each other for our differences and come together to create that beloved community, we remember that we are in this one world and one life together,” Stern said. “We are one human family that works better together.”

Noor Inayat Khan, the scholarship’s namesake, lived in a Sufi Interfaith Center in Paris during the Nazi invasion. As a young Muslim, she joined the British network of spies and sent coded messages between England and the French Resistance. She resisted numerous opportunities to escape to safety in order to continue to aid the resistance. Ultimately, this decision led to her death.

“Khan’s story inspires people from all different religious and non-religious worldviews to work together,” Tarah Trueblood, UNF’s Interfaith Center director said. “I could think of no more deserving recipients than Kalilah and Clare.”

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