young peoples faiths forum
The YPFF is designed to bring together young people from varied faiths communities, to act together in their communities. The project will start by bringing together young leaders from youth groups of four faiths across the area, initially in a series of team-building workshops, with opportunities to look at their experiences of their area, and what they would hope to do, given the opportunity to change that.
Working with experienced youth workers, the young people will then be given the opportunity, with support, training funding where possible, to put their plans into action. The development of this will be led by the young people themselves, though as a starting point we will be offering them options to:
- Act as the central body of a New Young Peoples Faith Forum, with support to develop events for young people of faith and no faith around the Borough
- Train to offer support and reconciliation for young people experiencing faith related tensions
- Become experts on faith in Dudley Borough, and work with youth groups to offer an Interfaith Experience.
Developments
We have been awarded funding through the Faiths in Action fund, over two years, to pursue this project. In developing it we have come to believe that the project would be best developed as a Black Country wide project. Following our request and explanation, the CLG have given us permission to begin exploring the development of the planned Young Peoples Faiths Forum in this way, bringing in youth groups of multiple faiths from across the Black Country.
We’ll be working with the Black Country Faiths Cabinet to recruit young people, and bring them together in a series of team-build activities. In offering these young people the opportunity, training and resources to work together to act as peace makers in their communities, on projects of their choosing, we hope to ignite great things.
