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Each year students from all over the world arrive at Bossey near Geneva for a three-month language training course to pave their way for ecumenical studies that follow on straight after. “The title captures the goal of the course,” says Father Lawrence Iwuamadi, the Nigerian priest who studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and is academic dean of the Ecumenical Institute.

On 18-19 July, 35 young leaders from 14 countries across Asia – part of the World Council of Churches' (WCC) Youth in Asia Training in Religious Amity (YATRA) – travelled to the Indonesian city of Bandung to meet with faith leaders and young activists engaged in interreligious dialogue and work.

The World Council of Churches' (WCC) popular YATRA (Youth in Asia Training for Religious Amity) programme has a new online learning component that adds four weeks of intensive training to two weeks of residential learning. When 35 young men and women from 14 different countries meet at the Jakarta Theological Seminary in Indonesia on 8 July, they will already have a familiarity with the major religious traditions found in Asia, thanks to their online studies.

Young ecumenical leaders from Asia have met in Siam Reap, Cambodia to examine how religious traditions can offer resources to overcome religious violence in a changing Asian context.

Exploring realities of multi-religious societies and discovering new ways of working together as faith communities to promote justice and peace, young Christian leaders from Asia have gathered in Cambodia to take part in a two-week training programme called Youth in Asia Training for Religious Amity (YATRA).

A seminar at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland gathered diverse reflections on eco-theology, care for the creation and climate change, and how to build a sustainable world. The contributors included Christian theologians and activists as well as youth.

By Emma Halgren (*)