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[8]In partnership with the ADYAN Foundation and Nahar Ashabab, the One Community: Promoting Inter-Faith Cooperation works with faith-based community organizations and their leaders, to undertake community development projects that promote religious tolerance in Lebanon.
IREX and its partners are also working with youth journalists to document the religious leaders’ cross-confessional, tolerance-building projects to highlight the benefits of inter-faith cooperation
• Increase positive interactions and collaboration among different confessional groups by bringing together pairs leaders and their religious community members for joint projects.
• Demonstrate the benefits of interaction and collaboration among confessional groups through multi-media outreach campaigns.
Lebanon’s diverse religious confessions live in close proximity, scattered block-by-block in a jumbled overlapping mix. Yet, there is little to no interaction among the various religious groupings resulting in limited understanding of other faith’s perspectives. The One Community program provides opportunities for these communities to work together to promote understanding and tolerance.
Religious Tolerance Workshop for Leaders – IREX, along with partner ADYAN, will train religious leaders in consensus-building, cooperative decision-making, common spiritual values, and the importance of inter-faith dialogue in shared communities.
Inter-Faith Community Projects – IREX and ADYAN will build participating religious leaders’ project design, proposal writing, and project management skills through a series of workshops. As a result of the workshops, the religious leaders will work together through small grants to implement community development projects that build consensus and tolerance along religious divides in their home communities.
Production of Multi-Media Outreach Campaigns – Youth journalists from the popular youth newspaper Nahar Ashabab will produce multi-media outreach campaigns and digital documentaries to document the religious leaders’ joint community projects and highlight the importance of inter-faith cooperation to communities in Lebanon and throughout the region.
Community Workshops & National Consensus Events – IREX and ADYAN will gather program participants and their communities to discuss their experiences participating in the religious leaders’ community development initiatives. The National Consensus events will showcase the process of conducting inter-faith projects and their results.
Building a Network of Tolerant Religious Leaders – Throughout the program, IREX and its partners will connect participants into the One Community Interfaith Network. The Network will link moderate religious leaders, open channels of communication, and provide greater stability when potential conflicts arise.