You Belong Here Scholarship Campaign

Partner with us in the healing work of Belonging, Inc. on Giving Day 2026! We are an organization that provides education, support and leader development to clergy, congregations and communities building communities of belonging.

Our "You Belong Here Scholarship Campaign" goal is $5,000 to fund 20 scholarships to ensure a diverse group of participants at two upcoming leadership trainings in St. Augustine.

Every dollar counts! Can you help chip in a few dollars to help us get there? You can donate here.

“You Belong Here,” is both an invitation and a declaration. It reflects our core belief that every person has a place in building diverse communities of trust, collaboration, and shared purpose.

This Giving Day, our goals are both financial and relational:

• Raise $5,000 to fund 20 scholarships for diverse participation
• Engage 50 “Partners in Belonging” who commit to supporting this work financially

These scholarships will help remove financial barriers so that a diverse group of participants can fully engage in two of our upcoming leadership training experiences:

• Building Bridges (September 4-7)
  A three-day journey focused on building authentic relationships across difference
• Living the Dream (January 14-15)
  A training designed to strengthen collaborative teams across difference

Creating meaningful change requires diverse voices in the room. Your support helps ensure that cost is not a barrier to participation—making it possible for people from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences to learn, grow, and lead together.

Mark your calendar for Giving Day May 6–7 and consider making a contribution. Whether you give, share this campaign, or tell your own story of why belonging matters, you are helping to create spaces where more people can truly say: “I belong here.”

Belonging Stories of Impact

To See and Be Seen Is a Gift

I’ve been coming here all my life—and I never knew these stories.

We hear this again and again on Belonging, Inc.’s St. Augustine Pilgrimages.

These are not the stories most tourists are told. Not the railroad legends or familiar landmarks. These are the stories of real people—people whose courage and faith helped bend the arc of history toward justice.

• Stories of Black men and women who stepped into their dignity and power, disrupting racial segregation in the 1950s and 60s.
• Stories of white rabbis who risked arrest because they believed that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere—sixteen of them jailed in St. Augustine.
• Stories of well-known leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and also of teenagers whose names are rarely spoken—Audrey Nell Edwards, JoeAnn Anderson Ulmer, Willie Carl Singleton, and Samuel White—arrested simply for trying to order a hamburger and a soda.
• And the story of a formerly enslaved man named Sitiki who, called by God, preached a liberating gospel and led a Methodist community for decades.

These stories have always been here. But too often, they have not been seen.

And when you know what it is like for your own story to be overlooked—to be treated as “less than”—then being seen becomes a profound gift.

To have your life acknowledged.
To have your dignity affirmed.
To be recognized not for limitation, but for worth.

That kind of seeing has the power to heal.

On pilgrimage, participants don’t just learn history—they encounter it. They begin to see these lives, these sacrifices, these truths. And in doing so, they begin to see themselves differently—as if through the eyes of God.

This is where truth and grace meet.
This is where healing begins.
This is where the fractures within us—and between us—start to close.

And this is the work you make possible.

Your support helps bring these hidden stories into the light. It creates space for transformation—for individuals, for communities, and for the Church.

Because to see and to be seen is a gift.

And through Belonging, Inc., that gift is being shared—again and again.