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Starting an interfaith youth project

30 November, 2007 - 09:57

Starting up an interfaith youth project is a great way to build understanding between young people from different backgrounds in your area.

Interfaith youth groups bring together young people with different beliefs and give them the chance to meet, talk and take part in joint activities. They help young people from different faiths and backgrounds to build friendships and find out about each other's beliefs and values.

Setting up a project can be daunting. Who will take part and what will you do in the meetings? Will the young people involved be happy to talk about their beliefs?

This section hopes to give you confidence and ideas.

Many different discussions, events and activities can form part of a successful interfaith project and different structures will suit different groups. Make sure that you ask the young people in your area what kind of youth project they would most like to get involved in and have a look at some of the examples on our online directory.

Diversity and Dialogue has found that asking young people to work together on their own campaign around a local or global issue can be a great way to build friendships and empower the group. Although discussion is vital to building understanding, groups can lose momentum unless they have a clear purpose. Working together to improve society can inspire and unite young people.

Below we set out six steps for starting up your own interfaith youth project. The process is particularly aimed at young people aged 14-19 years old. We envisage that this process will take place over a defined period of time (for example three months), but will hopefully provide a starting point for the establishment of an ongoing youth interfaith action group.

  1. Hold a kick start event
  2. Hold initial meetings
  3. Work together
  4. Get to know your community
  5. Take action
  6. Celebrate and evaluate

1. Hold a kick start event

Hold an initial event to publicise the project and give young people a taster of what it might be like to be involved.

Holding an initial event can be a great way of publicising the project and giving young people a taster of what it might be like to be involved in an interfaith group. Other benefits might include the potential for media interest and for building trust and support from other organisations and partners.

This initial event can provide the impetus for future work. You can ask anyone interested in getting involved further to sign up and come to a follow-up meeting.

The success of any event is dependent on the people who take part in it. If you do not have a group of young people in mind then make sure you devote time to recruiting for the event. This might include visiting groups and talking to schools and youth workers as well as advertising in the community.

Different events will be appropriate for different groups of young people. Make sure that you speak to young people from different faiths and backgrounds about the types of event they like to go to. Then use this information to plan an event that is popular with the majority of young people in the area.

Ideas

The following suggestions introduce the idea of taking action, but are also lots of fun and provide good opportunities for young people to get to know each other.

You could also hold an event that starts to share information about each other's faiths and cultures.

2. Hold initial meetings

Run initial meetings that give the group a chance to get to know one another and find out about each other's beliefs and views.

At the first few meetings it is important that everyone is made to feel comfortable and welcome. Make sure that the young people taking part are happy with the timings, venue and structure for the meeting and work with them to establish ground rules. It is also important that an interfaith group includes a balance of different faiths and backgrounds, including those who do not consider themselves religious. Discuss the make-up of the group with the young people taking part. Is anyone missing or under-represented?

The Inter Faith Network has produced a useful guide to setting up youth interfaith projects, in conjunction with the National Youth Agency and Timebank. Take a look at their tips and recommendations.

Begin the first few meetings with ice-breakers and activities to build trust and friendship. Then introduce discussions that start to explore different beliefs and values.

Take a look at section 4 of these resources for more Ideas for activities. We have also produced a DVD educational resource to prompt discussions.

3. Work together

Introduce the idea of working together on a social action project or campaign. Ask the young people involved to think about the issues that concern them most and about how their faith or values might motivate them to work for change.

After a few initial meetings, the group will be more established and the young people should feel committed to the project. They will have begun to share their beliefs and views, and discussed similarities and differences.

By forming an interfaith group you have already made a positive contribution to your local area, by helping to build understanding between young people from different faiths and backgrounds. But the group also has the potential to make a more tangible difference to where they live.

Ask the group whether there is something they want to change in their local community (or maybe even beyond!). At the moment they may not feel empowered to make a difference, but delve a little deeper and they should find that there are many ways in which they can work together to change things.

  • What does your group feel are the most important local or global issues that need tackling?
  • How can the group work effectively together and make a real difference to society?

First, get the young people to brainstorm a list of all the things that they think need changing in their community and beyond. Do they all agree about the things that need improving? Ask them to discuss their views and rank their ideas in order of importance.

Now introduce the idea that the group can work together on their own social action project or campaign, to tackle some of the problems that they have just identified.

Here are some starting points for activities to help the group plan an effective social action project and get the most out of working together.

Inspiration

Ask the young people in the group what motivated them to get involved with this project. Why do they care about certain issues? Does their religion motivate them to try to make a difference? Do their beliefs influence their attitudes to local and global issues? If so, how?

The activity below is a collection of quotations from different religious and secular perspectives that offer inspiration and prompt discussion.

You may also want to look at the following activity, which gives examples of charitable projects run by religious organisations and looks at the different ways in which religion can inspire good works.

Guess the Hero, activity one in The Good in Religion, can be downloaded in either Word or Powerpoint:

4. Get to know your community

Ask the group to go out into the community and find out about the views and concerns of people from different faiths, backgrounds, ages and areas. They should consider everyone's views when deciding on their campaign.

Interfaith projects aim to broaden understanding and co-operation, not just among the young people directly involved but also in the wider community.

Before developing a project, the group should consult with other people in their local area. What are the issues that concern them most? Is anything already being done locally to tackle some of these issues? Do different sections of the community have the same concerns and priorities?

The young people should visit different places of worship, other youth groups, schools, community centres and other local organisations and talk to people about their views. This will help them to see the world from a variety of different perspectives and find out about the issues that concern others in their local area. It will also help to raise awareness of their own project and build relationships with a range of local people and organisations.

By asking questions, recording answers and analysing findings, the group can build up an overview of the main concerns in the area. This should help them to develop a project that addresses a real need and that has the support of local community members. Remember the group has more chance of getting those with power and influence to take action if there is proof that there are a number of people locally who think the same as they do!

First, the group should decide on the number of organisations that they are going to visit and how many people they are aiming to speak to. They should assign roles, set dates to interview people and remember to contact the organisations in advance.

The group will probably want to develop their own questionnaire, but we have included a sample, to provide ideas.

Mapping

Once all the data has been collected it might be useful to display the findings visually, on a map of your local area. See the following activity for suggestions on how to do this.

When you have finished, evaluate what you have done using the following questions:

  • What was the most common topic talked about?
  • Did everyone have the same concerns?
  • What role did religion play in shaping the wishes of the community?

5. Take action

Next, ask the group to decide on what they want to change and challenge them to develop their own project or campaign.

The group has got to know each other and should be working well as a team. They have thought about what local and global issues matter to them and why, and considered the opinions of people in the local community. The group now needs to decide on the focus of their social action project. What do they want to change and how are they going to achieve this?

The possibilities are endless! They could include:

  • Running an environmental project that raises awareness of climate change in the local community. The group could encourage young people in the community to recycle or to take care of their natural environment. They could organise a litter-picking day to clean up a local park.
  • Supporting a charity that works on a local or global issue they care about, for example homelessness or poverty. They could run a regular food stall, organise a raffle or put on an event to raise awareness of the charity and its work.
  • Organising a carnival or festival to celebrate different cultures in the local area. They could invite local people from all faiths and backgrounds to participate and share food, music and dance.
  • Running an awareness raising campaign about religiously motivated bullying in their school. This could involve students, parents and teachers in learning about the problem and finding solutions.

Once the group have chosen an issue that they feel strongly about, they need to think about what they can do to make a difference. It is important that they develop a realistic and practical project with clear and achievable objectives. They should consider the following elements:

  • Time scale: How long will the project last and how much work can the group put into it?
  • Influence: Are they trying to influence those in power (an advocacy or campaigning project) or are they going to make the changes themselves?
  • Funding: Will the project require additional funds? Where will these come from?
  • Jobs: What needs to be done and how will responsibilities be divided?
  • Publicity: How will local people find out about what the group is doing?
  • Achievements: What exactly are they hoping to achieve? How will they evaluate what they have done?

The activities and suggested websites below, should help the group to develop a well-planned and successful campaign.

Talent spotting

This activity gets the young people thinking about how to utilise the skills and talents of everybody in the group. If they are going to work well as a team, they need to find the best person for each job! The activity asks them to think about what jobs are involved in delivering their social action project and to work out how to divide up tasks.

Power and influence

To make real change it is often necessary to influence those more powerful than you are and persuade them to support your cause. The activity below helps the group to work out who they should target to help them achieve their aims.

Publicity matters

The group might also want to publicise their project and let the local community know what they are doing. An easy starting point is to design a poster, print copies and display them around the local area.

Campaigning for Change is an activity that gets young people to design a poster raising awareness of the issues of HIV/AIDS and poverty. It could be easily adapted to suit whatever issue the group is working on.

Below are all the resources for the Campaigning for Change activity:

For an excellent guide to developing an effective campaign please see the Get Global! website. This guide provides a structure for students to think about issues that are important to them, plan and participate in action, and reflect on their performance.

For more ideas on social action projects your group could get involved in please see the Envision website. This youth campaigning organisation supports teams of students in schools across London and Birmingham in running social and environmental action projects.

6. Celebrate and evaluate

Finally, celebrate the group's achievements! Let others in the local area find out what the group has been up to. Reflect on and evaluate the project and prepare for the next challenge!

Make sure that the group celebrates their achievements. An event to recognise the young people's work helps to spread the feel-good factor across the wider community and provides an opportunity for adults from different faiths and backgrounds to come together too. This event can also be used as a chance to recruit new members for the next phase of the project.

It is also important to evaluate the project, asking the young people what they have gained from the experience. This may help in attracting future funding and will provide tips for making the group even better in its next phase.

There are many different methods you can use to evaluate a project. One of the most straightforward ways is asking the young people to fill in an evaluation form. Below is a sample evaluation form that you can use. You may need to edit or adapt this to suit your group and their project.

You could also do the evaluation as a whole group. Stick a couple of different pieces of flipchart paper up around the room, each with a different question. Ask the young people to write their answers to each question on a post it note and stick it up on the relevant paper. They can then walk round and consider each others comments.

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