Young people

Developing skills for dialogue and cooperation and taking part in those makes a vital contribution to creating a society where there is trust, respect and cooperation between people of different faiths and beliefs. There are an increasing number of young people who are doing this.

The Inter Faith Network for the UK (IFN) has a strong commitment to helping enable greater involvement by young people in inter faith activity. Its resource Connect: A Youth Inter Faith Action Guide is particularly relevant to this. IFN is building on this with a project to promote shared learning and encourage greater awareness of inter faith resources available for young people to engage in inter faith activity.

As part of the project, IFN is reaching out during February and March 2021 to youth inter faith bodies, inter faith bodies with youth programmes, national student faith and belief bodies, chaplains and students’ unions in HE and FE to gather their suggestions for inter faith resources already available and being used, as well as new approaches being taken to respond to the mainly virtual world of interaction brought about by the pandemic. The examples will be drawn on for a new section of IFN’s website.

• If you are an HE chaplain you can respond to the survey here: https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/OGQ7FL/
• If you are an FE chaplain you can respond to the survey here: https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/H0FQZK/
• If you are involved with an FE Students’ Union, you can respond to the survey here: https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/2G7YWG/
• If you are involved with an HE Students' Union or affiliated student society, you can respond to the survey here: https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/88RILC/
• NB: other surveys will be added here soon

The project began in November 2020 with a special Inter Faith Week virtual round table which brought together individuals from a range of different bodies such as the Religions for Peace UK Youth Interfaith Network and the Faith and Belief Forum; national student faith and belief bodies; and bodies with campus programmes, such as the Council of Christians and Jews’ Campus Leadership Programme. This roundtable event involved reflections from young people and those working with them on the importance of youth inter faith work and what challenges and opportunities there may be for the future of youth inter faith activity.

The project also includes helping with the development of a new online resource for secondary school pupils to help them learn about inter faith activity and develop skills for dialogue, and also increase the capacity of secondary school teachers to teach about inter faith relations.

Funding for the project has also enabled a Youth Inter Faith Engagement internship to enable a young person to have the experience of working for an inter faith organisation and gain new skills through working to help deliver this project.

If you have any questions or would like to contribute to this project, you can contact IFN’s Inter Faith Development Officer, Mr Ashley Beck ashley.beck@interfaith.org.uk or our Youth Inter Faith Engagement Intern, Ms Carrie Gealy intern@interfaith.org.uk

You can see information about some of IFN's past projects with young people using the links above the headline at the top of this page.