“Active Citizens” is a social leadership programme launched by the British Council that promotes intercultural dialogue and social responsibility around the world. Through its programme, Active Citizens brings together people with different beliefs and perspectives to learn from and share their experiences with each other. They train participants in the skills and knowledge needed to affect social change in their communities.

People affected by HIV have to face prejudice and stereotypes and tend to be isolated from the community, especially in religious contexts. Interfaith communities can be mobilized to unite and tackle the issue of HIV, and support patients, therefore including them in their communities, breaking stereotypes, and fostering coexistence. Different religious communities or interfaith groups can work on a solidarity program with a specialized organization, to show solidarity with affected patients.

Support for HIV patients can take the form of a video project that breaks stereotypes around those the virus. It shows people of different backgrounds dealing with the virus, their hardships and the social pain they go through. Sharing different narratives proves how anyone can be affected by HIV and challenges the stigma around it.

A theatre group can also engage people of different religious backgrounds and affected by HIV to raise awareness of their reality through theatre. The aim is to raise awareness of HIV within religious communities, to create safe spaces for affected individuals.

Interfaith conflict mediation can take different forms, from democratic empowerment in post-conflict environments, to material exchanges and dialogue to reconcile. When a conflict arises between two protagonists that have cultural and religious differences, mediation has to be fair and objective; it should not favor one over the other. Intercultural Conflict mediation ensures that each perspective and belief are taken into account in the mediation process.  

The Interfaith Democratic Empowerment is a program put in place by the religious leaders of a given country. They organize constitution reading workshops, debates, give their communities the judicial and advocacy tools to be active citizens in democracy building.

Interfaith material exchanges help establish a dialogue when it is hard for people to have verbal interactions with one another. Different religious communities can decide to work on a solidarity program with a specialized organization. These programs can take place through the year in villages or cities of religious communities or interfaith groups, to show that solidarity is a common value shared by all.

 “Religions to Reconcile” uses religion as a means to reconcile and unite people. This initiative implements reconciliation in environments or countries where religious identities often oppose each other and engage in conflict, thus engages them to come together and build a better society.

Social Media has become a great tool to initiate dialogue, foster peaceful coexistence, and address societal issues and values. This practice can be established through different activities such as a social media campaign that encourages local residents to interview each other and to talk about their faith through video stories. The results are shared on an online repository that captures the diversity of local voices and serves as a model for other local campaigns in cities and on campuses across the country.

Another platform that would foster interfaith dialogue are blogs. The InterFaith Blog encapsulates stories of interfaith experiences from different perspectives and is run by people from different cultural and religious backgrounds. This initiative uses social media to promote active coexistence, share stories of peace and friendship, and raise awareness on mutual understanding and respect.

Peacewalks are an interreligious practice that can be carried out in different manners. For instance, visiting tours can be organized to take people to different places of worship in different areas of a city. This provides an opportunity for people to learn about their neighbour’s religions. They can also make public statements on their commitment to peace and reconciliation. Another practice involves organizing a march on the remembrance day of a massacre, war, or genocide, therefore retracing the principal steps of history, and uniting people from all points of view to promote unity and reconciliation. It is a way to honour survivors or victims’ families and their memory, and an opportunity for perpetrators to apologize.

Food is an easy way to foster interfaith dialogue and peaceful coexistence, since it breaks down boundaries between communities and people.

Individuals open their homes to share dinner with 8-12 people from diverse religious backgrounds. During dinner, a trained facilitator leads the discussion and participants are invited to actively listen and share stories. A judgment free zone, these individuals are not expected to be experts in their religious tradition. Another similar practice involves people of different faiths getting together for dinner to welcome refugees in their country and community. Furthermore, people of different backgrounds can also be encouraged to share their dinner with people in need of shelter. Backed by their respective religious teachings, the interfaith group gathers to give assistance to the deprived, which is a value shared by many religions.

Sharing food can also be implemented in a yearly tradition. The Interfaith Food Day is a day in the year to discover diversity within a school or a workplace through food and traditional dishes. This initiative can be carried out for students to take pride in their development in a diverse and international environment while fully embracing their own identity.

Interreligious courses are an effective method to foster interfaith dialogue, as they educate. Different projects and pathways can be used to establish curricula and courses on interfaith coexistence, such as a national interfaith civic education. This can be formulated and organized by an interfaith organization that works closely with the education ministry of a given country to implement it. Through this unified national education curriculum, the youth are taught about understanding and accepting others’ beliefs, and that their citizenship entails a respect for all people regardless of their faith. Another project involves offering a year-long University course on interreligious issues, after which participants are awarded a diploma of interreligious affairs. The goal behind such a course is to inform students about our multi-religious world. This can be implemented in primary schools as well, through basic instructions on different belief systems and practices of their respective countries’ religions. Outside the school context, an educational activity can be conducted in parishes to bring together children of different traditions, such as Jewish and Christian faiths, on weekends to learn about the teachings of both religions. Other programmes and projects can offer a set of classes to learn about the history, development and contemporary practices of the world’s major religions. Such a program is designed for individuals seeking additional and informal education, and willing to participate in evening classes scheduled after work or university.  

This promising practice happens in multi-religious societies throughout the whole year, and is based on a citywide network of diverse faith communities, which provides resources and temporary housing for families experiencing homelessness. Different religious communities come together to lead cooperative societal projects. They partner up with local authorities to create links between religious communities, through social work. Young people from different religions are encouraged to give their time to a communal service, or get together to cook and distribute food to homeless people, either on the streets or in community centres. Associations are actively working for the development of communities in need, seeking young volunteers from different religious backgrounds who would assist remote and isolated communities. Their goal is to challenge the traditional way of community building and development, by incorporating a social purpose into the practice. Community development has equally important economic and social effects, thus this practice assists precarious villages or neighborhoods throughout the year, and gives them a sense of community that they don’t often have because of their isolation, for

Interfaith learning through international and interfaith travel to different countries, as well as weekend immersion trips to local houses of worship help build trust and relationships. In every conflict or area of tension, there are different sides to the story. The dual narrative tourism initiative is meant to provide visitors with two successive different narratives from two different guides, each one narrating their own perspective, for them to build their own opinion and expand their understanding of the situation. This practice can also take the form of visits to different religious spaces. Opening one’s religious space to others is a way of showing a facet of one’s religious identity and break down misconceptions. Inviting people to visit a place of worship is an opportunity to increase awareness and educate participants about a particular religion, answer questions and reinforce one’s faith through.

Interfaith travel can involve visiting different regions or countries. Interfaith region consists of touring one given region to shed light on similarities in terms of religious integration. Hence, this practice uses travel and tourism to focus on the question of identity and culture regardless of faith, and fosters interfaith unity through initiating discussions on interreligious similarities and differences.

Moreover, in countries where there are still indigenous communities, city-dwellers and these communities are not well-linked, as they live far away from the cities and are rather isolated. Interfaith travel can enable people from the city to reconnect with their backgrounds and the way their ancestors use to live, in order to recreate a link between all communities and to promote and support the indigenous way of life.

The practice of interfaith theatre can be utilized in different ways to suit the context of the subject matter in question. For example, one practice called Bibliodrama invites participants to understand and discuss the main religious figures present in the holy texts of a religion other than their own. Another form of interfaith theatre brings together youths of different faiths to act together in a play based in a zone of conflict between groups of different religions. Another example is “The Hindu and the Cowboy”, which is a theatrical production created from the stories shared by the residents of Kansas City. It showcases how interfaith communities in a city do not need to be viewed as a ‘melting pot’, but rather as a mosaic, in which each faith has its own integrity and identity and contributes in their own way to the beautiful full image. Lastly, the “Theatre of the People” is a mobile theatre where people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds create and perform a play, and travel together for representations. Along with all the preparations and performances, the theatre troupe engages the masses through workshops in schools and public spaces, and promotes inclusion and reconciliation through art and theatre.