Maurice A. Bloem is the interim President/CEO of the Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities (JLI), a learning network of researchers and practitioners. JLI builds fair and equitable spaces to create and share evidence on religions in development and community work and it aims to strengthen partnerships between and amongst faith and non faith actors, internationally and locally.
In 2011, Bloem started the 100-mile Walk, to raise awareness of issues around hunger and poverty. As part of the annual effort, Bloem Walks 100 miles in a single week, visiting programs supported and funded by CWS. More recently, as he needed to walk alone during the 2020 100-mile campaign, he started a podcast called Walk Talk Listen, so that he could still walk virtually with a number of guests. Now, he speaks on a weekly basis with leaders, including young and emerging ones, from different walks of life. The objective is to connect people around the world and to show that everyone’s perspective is true, albeit partial. Connecting might lead to listening and talking and even to walking and/or taking actions to make this world a bit better.