Youth Orientation on "Creating a Culture of Peace Through Interfaith Friendships"

On February 9, 2008, the United Religions Initiative Southeast Asia-Pacific (URI-SEAP) Regional Office, in cooperation with The Peacemakers’ Circle Foundation, Inc. gathered eighteen youths from different organizations, schools and faith backgrounds for a Youth Orientation on "Creating a Culture of Peace through Interfaith Friendships." The Peacemakers’ Interfaith Dialogue Center hosted the meeting; attendees included representatives from the Catholic Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Wiccan and Indigenous faiths, and other various organizations and institutions.

The afternoon started with a showing of the URI introductory video during registration. The program then opened with silent prayers and a warm welcome by URI-SEAP Regional Coordinator, Dr. Shakuntala Vaswani, followed by a short video presentation on how URI, as a global interfaith grassroots community, is working to end religiously-motivated violence and bring hope to the world.

After watching the videos, the participants got the chance to introduce themselves one by one; they also shared about what influenced them most about the films they viewed. As always, the most favorite and striking for them was the seven minute, semi-animated film entitled “Hope.” The young crowd agreed that it is a creative and captivating production that, despite the absence of words, has expressively put across profound messages of universal wisdom for peace and healing of the world.

The group then had snacks while watching another video on the 2002 URI Rio de Janeiro Assembly and a slide show of the first interfaith youth encounter of 2006 held in Manila, a meeting which gave birth to the Y4U (Youth for Unity) Interfaith Circle.

Having seen enough videos for the afternoon, the group engaged in some exercises and discussion on peace, led by Peace Educator and Youth Peace Camp Facilitator, Ms. Angge Pacifico-Herrera. Starting with limbering exercises to warm up the body and perk up the mind, she invited each youth to draw images on the white board to illustrate one thing that they wanted to change or remove from the world, and one thing they wanted to see in the world. Next, she asked the group to think of a step or action one could take to make the change they saw. 

At the end of the day, the young people were invited to share their passion and talents to create a culture of peace through interfaith friendships in the global URI network. Since it was the first meeting, there was no expectation that big projects would materialize, but at least the seeds of inspiration and hope were planted in the hearts and consciousness of the youth that attended the orientation. So much so that the next gathering was set up for the next month which the group decided to hold outdoors—amidst nature—with the theme “Relaxation and Unwinding.”