About Us

EPIC's Mission

The mission of the Ecumenical Project for International Cooperation is to promote peace, respect for human rights, sustainable development, and preservation of the environment through research, education, and action and by encouraging cooperation among other organizations involved in these areas. EPIC's vision is to forge the determination to respond to the urgent problems facing the world today and to provide practical vehicles for doing this.

How does EPIC carry out its mission?

EPIC is a faith based service organization (NGO), both ecumenical and inter-faith. It works internationally and within the United States in the areas of:

Sustainable Development
Environmental Protection
Peace
Human Rights

EPIC promotes these objectives through an interface between research, education, and action and by encouraging cooperation among organizations. EPIC is small which allows it to be especially personal, flexible, and creative.

EPIC chooses projects it will support in two ways:

EPIC searches out projects that represent a creative response to a significant global problem. The response should have several of the following characteristics:

Innovative approach to the problem
Successful in its results
Working in a geographic area or with a response not used by others and thus not
competing with other organizations
An interface between research and action
A pilot project or example for others

EPIC sponsors projects that represent an expertise, opportunity, or passion of an EPIC member who assumes major responsibility for that project. EPIC is member based, and members may suggest new projects. With the approval of the Board of Directors, the member becomes the animateur for the new project. Animateur is a French word that can be translated as promoter. In the context of EPIC's work, an animateur is an EPIC member who provides EPIC's connection to a particular project. A Board Member or EPIC Life Member works with the animateur to assume three areas of responsibility:
- Relating to the project by maintaining communication with the local director
- Helping to raise the funds budgeted by EPIC for the project
- Providing project reports, with photographs when possible