PathWays for Diversity Education Inc. was established for educational purposes in order to promote mutual respect and social cohesion across the diversity of belief in Australian society, including both faith and freethought worldviews. This educational work is carried out in two main settings: first, in the training of young adult presenters; and second, among senior high school students, usually in year ten.
In all settings, PathWays deliberately engages in a conversational workshop format, in which younger and older participants have equal opportunity to contribute, including students, presenters and experienced representatives of faith and freethought.
Pathways is quite pioneering in terms of interfaith dialogue, and has broadened its focus to inter-belief dialogue. It has created a new dialogue and cooperation linking people from both religious and secular organizations. The term interbelief is used to denote this diversity that moves beyond interfaith to embrace humanist worldviews. Pathways sends presenters, mainly young people, from three different belief backgrounds into schools in which they talk about their own experiences with their belief background, and answer questions from students. This program called Path-Wise has been affirmed by teachers and students in both public and private schools and also by related community groups. Pathways has worked in cooperation with interfaith networks in local government areas.