Youth inter-religious dialogue as a bridge to peace

What

Context and motivation

The idea of Summerweek came from contact - making seminar of religious (Muslim, Jewish, Christian) youth organisations. The meeting took place in May 2005, Warsaw, Poland as a conference that was relevant to the Council of Europe Head of States meeting. This informal group (participants of seminar) got the input as an expert group to the Youth Summit meeting in Warsaw. One of the outcomes from our previous activities is a strong need of the inter - religious dialogue for the peace among young people. Through the meeting of young representatives of three big religions, we’d like to show how this dialogue is needed in today’s Europe. The role of youth faith-based NGOs is to prepare youth to the role of constructors of peace bridges and mutual understanding in their local communities. In the light of last religious based conflicts, we found the importance  to enable members of our movements to meet, get to know, integrate and to create methods of collaboration for the peace.

Preparations

The trainers are youth leaders, representatives of different religions and cultures. All of the movements that took part in this project got possibility to influence the shape of meeting’s programme.

Before the beginning of meeting in Oświęcim, the trainers’ meeting will take place in Warsaw and one online meeting. Trainers will adjust the program to the profile of participants and their individuals expectations.

Expert group (including religious people representing three main religions, as well as lay experts experienced in inter - religious dialogue) is going to supervise the process of work on the project and its content.

            Participants will be delegated by 11 movements: partners in this project. Participants will receive the information leaflets and brochures that will help them to prepare to the active participation in the meeting. They will be also asked to present projects from their own movements that suits the profile of the meeting’s issue.

Aims and objectives

Many faith - based movements, that represent big group of young people, are active in Europe. Unfortunately, often the movements got restricted contacts with other similar groups. The occasion – as this meeting is - will encourage all of this groups to collaborate and in final result will improve inter - religious dialogue in Europe among youth.

1.       The main aim of the seminar is to enable youth faith-based movements mutual understanding, and to share good practise in inter - religious dialogue. We’d like materials from this meeting to serve as scenarios and sources for the participants to facilitate to organise similar meetings in local environment and groups.

The form of this meeting is very innovative. Inter - religious dialogue, that we are going to have is not a theological neither philosophical dialogue. This will be rather social inter - religious dialogue, that means the dialogue among different religions’ believers in order to solve common social problems. The discussion must be adjust to the participants’ needs and capabilities. We value their comments and experience. During the meeting, we’d like to find out the methods that young people can use to create bridges to peace.

2.       Partners of the project are going to discover how youth engaged in faith-based movements’ activities can actively stand for peace and tolerance in Europe. The young people that took part in the project will create project enabling to build peace bridges and understanding among young people, stand against racist and xenophobic tendencies, help to eliminate all forms of discriminations and promote equality and mutual understanding on European level. Different participants experience assures different opinions and possibility to exchange experience. It will positively influence the level and quality as broaden the perspective of activities in this project.

3.       Partners of this project are supposed to find out the way to transmit good examples to political institutions on local, national and European level as well as to the CoE and EU.

Beneficiaries

Direct beneficiaries of the project are the organizations taking part in the seminar, and their representatives. In further perspective we would like to reach the local communities, as youth NGOs and young people, who will be able to use the contacts they got during Summerweek.

Information about direct results of the meeting will be transmitted, by representatives of each movement taking part in seminar, to the European Youth Forum, as well as to the religious communities, to which the Summerweek’s participants belong. This is the way how we wish to present the examples of methods and tools to decrease prejudices towards the representatives of other religions. All interested movements/ organizations will be able to use these methods in their daily work.

After the end of the meeting, the website will be created, in order to promote the inter-religious and inter-faith dialogue. The report of the seminar, as well as the scenarios of the workshops, will be available there. Editors’ team of this website will be formed by Summerweek’s participants.

Methods of work

To achieve the aims presented in plan of the seminar, we will use various methods or work: from the plenary sessions through the panel discussions to the games and simulations, all in order to spread and improve knowledge about cultures and religions of every group. The important part of the programme is work in project’s groups, since we find that creativity in small groups is much bigger than work in big group.

We intend to explore the variety of non-formal education as well as informal learning methods, cause we find it as the best way to reach youth participants. Despite the program of the seminar is very serious, the way to achieve it will be adopted to the needs and capabilities of all participants – to their age (16 – 26) and their experience.

Inter-cultural dimension

The language of the meeting is english. Communicative level of english knowledge is one of the conditions to participate in activity. Invited experts will present their speech also in english. In this situation there is no need of translators.

Organizations taking part in this activity already have the experience in organizing inter-cultural events. Besides inter-cultural dimension, our seminar will also have an inter-religious aspect. We want to explore it also to the mutual understanding of the daily customs, which are directly linked with religion. As kosher and halal diet is. Participants will have the possibility to get to know the different religious traditions also by visiting the temples of the three religions.

One of the ways to meet cultures will be the common meals, that will be provided according to requirements of Judaism and Islam. It will let the participants to get to know daily customs of different cultures.

The idea of this meeting came into being based on the  conviction that the best way to defeat stereotypes and prejudices, as well as to build the mutual understanding and tolerance is to enable young people to establish personal contacts with followers of other religions, representatives of different cultures and the cultures themselves.

When

Organiser

Target Groups