Interfaith and Grassroots Initiatives
Regional Interfaith Dialogues have persistently called for grassroots action and intiatives in the community as a means of furthering tolerance, understanding, community cohesiveness and as a resource in times of natural disaster and calamity.
Promotion of Interfaith dialogue at the grassroots level serves as an instrument to promote sustainable livelihoods and community cohesiveness or unity, thus, becoming the basis of civil society to promote the democratization process.
Harmony, cooperation and understanding are enhanced by exchanges between people (e.g. youth, students, teachers, religious leaders, academics) of different faiths, within and between countries, and at the grassroots communal levels. Such exchanges deepen inter-cultural understanding, and promote community values.
Interfaith activities help communities to learn more about each other through informal settings such as community gatherings, festivals, sporting events or projects.
Grassroots interfaith cooperation lays a powerful foundation for aid and assistance in critical community concerns in our region such as poverty, HIV, human rights, environmental issues and natural disasters.
Grassroots Community Intitiatives and Interfaith
RID Delegates and website participants are invited to submit contributions to this topic area, using the Contact form or the Submit News or Events page.
Reports:
Practical Action
Reports:
Grassroots Initiatives for Peace - Philippines
Buddhist Engagement in Promoting Community Peacebuilding - Cambodia
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Community Noticeboard
Interfaith Calendar
Check out the Interfaith Calendar for the month ahead.
We, as leaders of faith communities, need to develop a more inclusive view of the religious other, to recognise the humanity of the religious other as a starting point. We need to recognise the essential equality of all human beings regardless of religious beliefs. We need to affirm the mutuality and interdependency of all people... We may need even to extend this and recognise that religious other may, just may, have at least some access to the Truth. We may need to accept that the religious others also adopts more or less the same set of essential universal ethical-moral principles we share; that the religious other has feelings of pain and pleasure just like us; that the religious other has similar expectations about their children and family and the preservation of life, property and security; and that the religious other has the same fears and anxieties about the world and the future, just like us.