What an amazing year we've had! After being part of the URI Youth Ambassador program in 2010, the fruits of interfaith co-operation are now flourishing in my region. Our group InterAction has been bringing together more young people than ever through youth-led projects of interfaith action. What we do is simple; weeding the community garden & handing out sandwiches to the homeless. But through common action we accomplish something amazing. We get to know one another as people of faith and we join together as people who care.
The Parliament of World's Religions landed in Melbourne just over a year ago. "The most exciting and exhausting week of my life" would be one way to describe the experience. But importantly it marked a transformational moment in the interfaith youth movement which I wrote about in an article published in the Journal of Interreligious Dialogue. At the Parliament it was meeting with other young people that was the greatest inspiration. People such Jem, another 22 year old Buddhist like myself striving for interfaith co-operation at her University campus in the US. Now Jem works with the Interfaith Youth Core helping build the interfaith youth movement internationally.
Another friendship I made was with Lachlan, a passionate young man from Aotearoa (known to most as New Zealand). In several conversations we began to uncover a shared sense of the importance of involving more young people in interfaith action. At the heart of this was the knowledge that this wasn't going to happen by accident - we had to build it! We wanted to work together but we weren't sure how. Now it seems that chicken has come home to roost, as later this month I will head to Aotearoa to speak at the 8th National Interfaith Conference. The main purpose is one of sharing. To share knowledge and skills of how to build this movement. I am excited about some of the amazing work happening there, and I hope we have something useful to offer from what we've been doing here. It would be great to see this give rise to some future projects or partnerships - but most importantly I hope we can nurture an ongoing culture of collaboration.
Without the support of the URI Ambassadorship I doubt any of this would have been possible, and now as we welcome the 2011 URI Youth Ambassadors I am excited to think of what they will achieve. There is so much hope and potential at this time. Such inspiring possibilities are opening up for what we will be. Luckily there's plenty of hard work to keep us busy along the way!
