Breaking the mould
New styles of inter faith work by and with young people

Rachel Heilbron, Programme Director, Three Faiths Forum

Bishop Tom Butler: I am now very pleased to introduce Rachel Heilbron who is  the Programme Director of Three Faiths Forum with a special responsibility for their youth programme, 3FF.  They have been developing across recent years, as she will tell us, a range of programmes specially dedicated to increasing young people’s inter faith skills.  She will also be facilitating a linked workshop in the afternoon. 

Rachel Heilbron:

Thank you very much for inviting us here. The Three Faiths Forum enjoys a close relationship with the Inter Faith Network and I am really delighted to talk at its National Meeting today. 

My colleague Claire Ellis and I will talk in one of this afternoon’s workshops about the work we are doing with young people in a variety of different areas, including the new methodologies and approaches that we are using.

The Three Faiths Forum is one of the leading national interfaith organisations working in the youth area. We are just beginning our fourth year of doing programmatic work with young people and have already reached over 3,000, probably closer to 3,500, young people now, through schools, youth groups and other contexts. 

Our remit is to carry out projects working with Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities in providing spaces for them to meet each other and learn from each other. We provide opportunities for people from those communities to engage with wider society and we also see our remit as including creating spaces for young people and adults to talk about faith and beliefs - whatever faith or belief they are within society.  We believe we have developed some effective methodologies to help people do that. 

Our work falls into three different areas which we describe as Education, Engagement and Action. The education work is increasingly about helping young people gain an understanding of faiths. Some of that is saying “I don’t understand what Christianity says about this: “give me some more ways to learn about it.” The engagement work is about supporting dialogue between different faiths but also creating ways, especially for young people from different faith and belief systems, to meet each other in an exciting and innovative environment.  Lastly, action. This is facilitating shared projects between people. In the course of these projects the kinds of questions young people raise are sometimes traditional ‘dialogue’ type questions about faith issues. But they are often very practical, from basic questions about where to go for a cup of tea to more detailed project focused questions.

I will focus today on two of our projects with young people.  One of them is school focused. We work in secondary schools across London and increasingly further afield. On a daily basis we have three education officers who work with a team of about 45 volunteers.  Every day they are in schools doing different programmes. Our newest project is going to be running the ‘Shared Futures’ programme, the first year of which was under the auspices of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.  The programme is about creating links between faith schools and developing guidance for people about what it means to work with faith schools on cohesion issues.  We also do projects with youth groups and provide training for inter faith facilitators for young people. And we have projects on Faith and Fashion and on undergraduate mentoring which I will talk about later. 

We believe that every young person needs to have better skills and greater confidence to be able to engage with anybody, no matter what their faith or belief.  We think that skills based approach can help create the leaders of tomorrow.  The different programmes we offer for young people include interactive learning about religious texts and encountering people of different faiths and practising dialogue and communications skills.  I am going to talk more about our youth group linking.  Unfortunately I could not bring some of the young people here today, involved in this particular programme so I am going to read out some of the things they said:

Helima, Danny and Morgan – who you can see in some of the pictures here – are members of youth groups in Barnet in North London.  Helima is from a Somali Muslim background.  Danny goes to Edgware District Reform Synagogue and Morgan was part of the youth group at St John’s Church.  Over the course of the last year they have been meeting with other people from the youth group to learn and create together.  This is how they describe the programme they went through.

Helima said, “In the first three meetings, Three Faiths Forum staff (Debbie and Sana, who are two of our education officers) met us in our own places of worship and we had an opportunity to ask questions about the other faiths.”  The activity being referred to here to is our ‘Encounter Faiths’ activity, which we run with youth groups and more regularly with schools. We bring presenters in their twenties and thirties into a school environment or a youth group context and they give anarrative introductions to who they are. Then we give students permission to ask any questions they want, with all the support they need (including discussing what questions they would like to ask).  If questions come up that are particularly sensitive or difficult we have a specific methodology dealing with these called the ‘ASKeR methodology’  which, if you come to my workshop late you will be able to hear more about. 

Danny goes on to say “One way in which we got to know each other better and neighbouring faiths better, was to look at our sacred scriptures.  We looked at what our scriptures tell us about forgiveness and it became clear that the three Abrahamic faiths have a great deal in common  We also spent time looking at where religions had conflicts in the past.  We looked at our similarities and where prejudices between the faiths arise.” 

The activity to which they are referring  is are “Tools 4 Trialogue”. This arose out of the practice of scriptural reasoning where we give young people texts - verses of scripture -  from the three different Abrahamic faiths on particular themes.  They read the texts with support from people of those faiths.  They hear from presenters who say what those texts mean to them in their lives and then they have discussions and get a chance to ask questions.  We use these sessions as springboards for discussion on big issues.  We ask the questions “What does it mean that someone of a particular faith relates to these verses of scripture? What – if anything - does it mean to you?”  We build in all those different ideas for the activity.  We do this with young people from the Abrahamic faith traditions and also with young people of other faiths and beliefs.

Morgan said “We were all asked at the beginning of the project why we wanted to get involved?  Why did we want to meet once every three weeks with people from different faiths?  Some of us wanted to learn more about our own religious traditions and others wanted to see what we had in common with others and what was different.  Some of us just enjoyed meeting new friends.”

Towards the end of their project the young people did creative programmes. Half of the group did photographic work and the other half created a song.  This is some of the text of the song.  If all works well I  will play you a little snippet of the song they put together.

These Hands of mine

Look at the world and how its burning
Look at the way we’re still not learning
Can’t help the fact we’re just not trying hard enough

Maybe it’s time to come together
Think of a way to make things better
Look at the facts, I know that we are good enough

No better time to start than now

I can choose to use these hands of mine
To break down another wall
Or I can choose to use these hands of mine
To do nothing at all
I have been given the freedom to decide
How to use these hands of mine.

If someone’s in trouble, I’ll help them through it
Whatever you need I’m there I’ll do it
Gimme a call, you know I’m always here for you

I will move on now to our Undergraduate Parliamentors programme which is the major way we engage  young people of university age.  The Undergraduate Parliamentors programme has trios of students, Muslim, Jewish and Christian working together over the course of a year on a project of their choosing. They are mentored by an MP.  This programme has run for two years with 27 students each year.  Next year we will be having 45 students from all across the country working together on programmes.  In this slide the woman in the middle is Anna Dyachenko. She worked with Richard Daniels and Adviya Khan and said that the project enriched her knowledge and understanding of the world.  She said “Essentially, due to our differences we’ve enjoyed a multi-perspective interaction which has equally reinforced the ideological basis of the project.”  Their particular project was mentored by Simon Hughes who is one of our Parliamentarians supporting the project.  It was called “Roots”, as in grassroots.  They worked with 14 year olds in Southwark in their Citizenship Education lessons, teaching them the relevance of politics to the lives of young people. They got the young people in the school really excited about how they could get their voices heard through political ways.  They did workshops in schools and a final event in Parliament which was supported by Simon Hughes. 

Anna said:

Ultimately, I believe that one of the most important implications of the programme is the way in which it tackles the popular prejudice about ‘them’ and ‘us’. On top of altering the stereotype of political elitism and public apathy in Britain, the programme has also provided an insight into the mechanisms of politics, we acquired the view of British politics from inside. I think that is quite indicative of the fact that inter faith work should be  useful for the young people who are involved.  How can we make sure the young people who are very “time poor” with so much pressure on their time, make useful programmes?  

This year we had nine groups and they undertook a whole variety of projects which they chose themselves to reflect the issues that they are interested in.  This year these included:  ID cards; child labour; human rights; an Abraham week of activities ranging from theological discussion to music performances; life saving skills and first aid; and research into the British educational system. 

On 11 June this year Anna and the 26 other participants were given their graduation certificates by the Speaker of the House of Lords and were invited to join our mentoring alumni network.  As the programme grows - this year there will be 45 students - the network will provide an excellent link between students of different faiths working together in different fields alongside graduates of our other mentoring programmes.  We have a sister project called ‘Documentors’ which works with filmmakers and we hope this year to have Business Management Mentors. With these different disciplines people will be able to mentor and network not only cross-faith but also cross-discipline. 

We see our work very much as trying to create a movement and to work with you all in the work that you are doing to create a movement -  a movement of young people who are curious about others; feel confident in their communications; have had solid experience in meeting people who are different to them;  think critically about the world; have a vision of what they want their world to be like; have the skills to change what they feel needs changing; and have a passion and impatience to be the catalyst to make the changes happen.   We don’t see them as the future – we see them as the present.  Young people have very different experiences of integration and diversity from those of their parents and also different experiences from those educating them.   We feel that we need new methods to work with young people and we need to provide more opportunities for young people to tell us what they want.  We also need to hear what they say and to act on what they want. 

We cannot create this movement on our own.  What we really see of value is people working in this area together. We are members of the Culture, Faith and Youth Connective  which is a group of inter faith and intercultural youth organisations which are all working together in a variety of different ways on these areas of identity and diversity of faith or belief focus.  If you want your organisation to get involved with this group we would love you to join.   Please contact me for information. 

As I have said, what we believe we have at Three Faiths Forum are some new methodologies and experience of working with young people on a daily basis whether  in schools, colleges, youth groups or universities. And we are really keen to share what we have learnt and to work with you all in the different areas you are working on. 

Finally, I would like to say that our office and our work environment and our organisation is an inter faith project in itself.  We have people from a variety of different faiths and beliefs working together.  So the question of how we lead daily lives as people of different faiths is important to us within the organisation just as it is in the work that we do externally.

Bishop Tom Butler: As before, we have time for two or three questions. 

Rudrajoy Chakraborty, National Hindu Students Forum from University of Birmingham.  I come from a Hindu background and I have attended quite a few meetings where we have all gathered together.  How do you tackle politics and current conflicts, as these seem to be a big barrier between people of the Abrahamic faiths when they bring up (I’m sure you can guess what I’m getting at), certain issues which are hard to tackle. Do you just avoid them or do you bring them up? How do you tackle that?

Rachel Heilbron: A lot of it depends on which project it is and who the participants are, how long you have working with the group, what the remit is and why we have been asked to come and run a session.  If we have been asked to run a session at a school and we have been given a particular remit then, if difficult questions about politics come up, we may say that it is not appropriate to discuss these at that time.  However, with our longer term projects we definitely feel that if people want to talk about particular issues we can create space and facilitate that discussion where it occurs.  In fact, in January this year when there were particularly serious events happening in  Gaza and Israel we put together some resources because we were quite worried what it would be like going back to schools in January -  how were we going to deal with the fact that we had said to the young people that they could ask any questions they wanted?  We had a Jewish person and a Muslim person on the panel.  So what we did was a lot of thinking and consulting with other people about what it means to talk about conflict.  And, as I said, we put together some resources which you  are very welcome to download from our website.  So we do not shy away from talking about conflict. But, at the same time, we try not to let it overtake the whole discussion. 

Javid Jalili, National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the UK: Do you have any links with ex-Prime Minster Tony Blair’s Faith Foundation? And do you think that is proving to be a positive initiative? 

Rachel Heilbron:  The Tony Blair Faith Foundation is running a variety of different programmes and one of these is Inter Faith Dialogue via video conferencing.  Has any one seen how video conferencing works?  It means that you are at your computer with a webcam or a much posher video camera and you can talk to people all over the country.  What the Foundation wanted from us was support on how to facilitate good dialogue.  One of our education officers is supporting them. If any of you want to read about this, one of our Education Officers wrote a very interesting article about the idea of doing video conference dialogue in our last newsletter, which is on our website (http://www.threefaithsforum.org.uk/FacilitatingInterfaithViaVC.htm). 

Andrew Wingate, St Philip’s Centre for Study and Engagement in a Multi Faith Society here in Leicester:  I think that a couple of years ago Hindu Forum UK were involved with a scheme where young people who are interested in politics had the chance to interact on a one-on-one basis with MPs and spend time in the House of Commons.  One of the hopes, I think was to get more Hindu members coming up as Members of Parliament in the future.  Is that one of the aims of the Parliamentors programme?

Rachel Heilbron: It is more about saying that politics is quite difficult to get into and some people have a lot more opportunity than others to be able to experience politics and support for their career in politics.  What we want to do is to make sure that  young people of different faiths who would not usually have that experience are given this opportunity to see what it means to be a politician or to be in a politics related field.  The primary aim is not to get more people of faith into politics but it is possible a by-product of people seeing how it is possible to have that opportunity.  Could I add that  it is very important to us that we are a non-religious organisation working with people  who want to talk about faiths and beliefs, although when we do focus on faith we focus on Islam, Christianity and Judaism.  A lot of our work is talking about faiths and beliefs in society as we believe that is as important as traditional inter faith dialogue work. 

Bishop Tom Butler: Thank you.  We now have ten minutes or so for more general contributions from the floor. 

Mr Lateef Hussaini Watford Inter Faith Association:  I would like to report an activity which was conducted this year.  The activity was an inter school poster competition which gathered about 250 entries from around 50 schools in and around Watford. The theme of the poster competition was “Appreciation of Different Cultures and Faiths”.  The sponsors were Hertfordshire Constabulary.  They have been a great help and we gave four prizes. We would do this again in future because it has been a very popular activity amongst the schools and students. 

Mark Graham, Loughborough Council of Faiths:  I thought I would mention our inter faith pantomime which we performed this year. We believe it to be the first anywhere in the world. It was Dick Whittington. The Lord Mayor of Loughborough attended. It involved 100 people from various different faith communities within the tow and they spent months working hard together, creating friendships and relationships across the faith boundaries.  These were not people who were normally involved in inter faith activit, but they were predominantly young people and people who were interested because an event was happening that was not just about sitting down talking to one another but was an opportunity to be creative together.  We performed in front of a packed audience of 500 at Loughborough Town Hall to great critical acclaim.  The pantomime had all the usual ingredients of the villain and the dame and the leading lady.  All those traditional pantomime themes were there but the music and the dances were from different faith traditions.  It was a really fantastic project. Some of the people involved in performing the pantomime had never actually seen a pantomime, so we had to take them to a pantomime first so they got the idea.  They would say to us, “It says here “Audience goes “He’s behind you”.  Who’s going to tell the audience to say tha?.”  If you have grown up in the host culture then you know about pantomimes, but if you have not you do not necessarily know about them.  It was a great opportunity to say, look - people of faith do have a sense of humour.  People of faith are not all  humourless souls. If anybody thinks that their local inter faith group would like to have a go at doing a pantomime we can probably provide you with the script. 

Minou Cortazzi, Leicester Council of Faiths:  I am Chair of Leicester Council of Faiths.  I just wanted to say that there are some exciting things happening in the Leicester Council of Faiths.  We have a new Project Manager called George Valentine who has done tremendous work in different communities in Leicester and has produced materials such as leaflets from and about all the faiths. There are also leaflets on activities which were researched by two people in Leicester – Sarah and Tova and considered by the Leicester Council of Faiths. These leaflets are available here if anyone would like to look at them. 

Kashmir Singh Rajput, Bradford District Faiths Forum: In my experience  the role of faith organisations is crucial in terms of building a cohesive society. They bring the dimension of the spiritual life as well as international links and interrelationships.  Yet a number of organisations across the country are experiencing financial difficulties meaning that it is difficult to sustain their groups or to promote further work This issue of funding is seriously affecting our performance and our ability to help build a cohesive society.   

Click here to read the full report from the 2009 National Meeting of the Inter Faith Network for the UK