Reinforcing the traditional role of faith communities in offering sanctuary and, indeed hospitality to refugees, 90 faith-based leaders today committed to offering their continued and additional support to refugees, including children, on their journey to safety, including in reception and admission, meeting protection or service delivery needs and supporting communities to find solutions such as private sponsorship or scholarship programmes.
Carla Khijoyan, World Council of Churches (WCC) programme executive for the Middle East, shares her journey of how the Emerging Peacemakers Forum was initiated. She was formerly the WCC programme executive for Youth Engagement in the Ecumenical Movement.
The Emerging Peacemakers Forum aims to empower youth to contribute to building a better future for themselves and humanity, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Elders said at a meeting in Geneva.
Messages of hope related to climate change and global conflicts from renowned global peacemakers have inspired young Christians, Jews, and Muslims at the Emerging Peacemakers Forum, held 5-14 July at the World Council of Churches (WCC) Ecumenical Institute at Bossey. The young peacemakers have spent nearly 10 days crafting the next generation of peacebuilding.
The forum is organized in partnership between the Muslim Council of Elders, the WCC, and the Rose Castle Foundation.
50 young people from 24 countries have sent a message of hope to the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28), which will be hosted by the United Arab Emirates at the end of 2023. The message was delivered during a special ceremony during the second edition of the Emerging Peacemakers Forum, held at the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, Switzerland.
A woman who works with youth in Kenya—young people who once turned to heinous crimes—had a group of young Christians, Jews, and Muslims weeping tears of compassion and joy as she recounted her tough upbringing and how she helps turn those youth from crime to community.
Peace is not a given these days, an international group of young Christians, Jews, and Muslims has heard from a woman whose father survived the Holocaust as she stressed the need to talk and listen to one another.
The Christians, Jews, and Muslims laughing and chatting together, learning about peace were not in an aspirational story; they are authentic, live young people having fun at the Emerging Peacemakers Forum.
What might be termed “an authentic interreligious encounter” is also, more simply put, a question of what it means to belong. Eleven students at the World Council of Churches (WCC) Bossey Ecumenical Institute deeply explored this question as they completed a Certificate in Advanced Studies in Interreligious Studies course.
From 23-25 March, 1,600 young people from 43 countries came together in Beirut, Lebanon with the brothers of the ecumenical, monastic community of Taizé (France). Middle Eastern and Western Christians discovered how fruitful and stimulating an ecumenical exchange can be.
“I have an absolute confidence in your youthful and great enthusiasm and your heightened state of awareness that you will be ambassadors of peace, mercy and cooperation among all peoples.” This message, from Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Dr Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, visibly uplifted and inspired young people attending a seminar, “Youth Engagement, Religion and Violence,” in Cairo this week.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) â is defined by all the three key words in our name. We are global, in all continents, and therefore also in solidarity with one another, seeking peace in all its meaning for the whole earth,â said the WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit.
