Dear Syed Mohammed, I wanted to get in touch to let you know what’s been happening at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation recently. This is the first newsletter in a new regular update, which we will send out quarterly. I hope you find it interesting and useful. The mission of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation is to provide practical support to help prevent religious conflict and extremism. Our focus is on being a catalyst for change, devising and developing programmes that incubate different ideas for countering religious tensions and extremist narratives. We demonstrate the evidence of our impact to governments and global institutions wherever they operate, so they can see the merit of adopting our programmes and take them to scale. As well as raising the profile of our work, we are reaching important audiences. In November, we were pleased that our Patron, Tony Blair, was given the opportunity to convey our focus and approach to the international community when he was invited to brief the United Nations Security Council Counter Terrorism committee. In his keynote address Tony Blair delivered a stark message – start thinking of education as a security issue. Mr Blair called for global action to reform education systems to show young people that the only sustainable future is one where people respect each other as equals, regardless of faith and culture. He cited the success of a range of programmes and in particular our own Face to Faith global schools programme. The speech was met with worldwide interest, raising the profile of this vital issue. The level of support for our work is extremely encouraging and we look forward to working further with international governments during 2014. This is also a key example of how the Foundation is now part of a crucial global mission to counter violent extremism. As we look around the world violence in the name of religion continues to reach new heights, with extremism in many cases providing the fuel to further ignite the bloodshed. We believe that a coordinated, international effort to puncture the ideology and activities of religious extremists is absolutely crucial for sustainable impact to be achieved. To this end, we are working with governments and other organisations to create the world’s first global fund to counter extremism at a grassroots level. As a member of the steering group, we continue to press for sustained funding of this vital work based on our experience in delivering these kind of grassroots projects. Our programmes continue to develop, expand and most crucially have real impact on the ground. We recently produced our Impact Report for 2013, which details the difference we are making. The Foundation’s global schools programme Face to Faith is working with over 1000 schools and has now reached over 68 000 young people. Our Faith and Globalisation work with universities and others continues to support current and future leaders to fully understand the impact of religion in the world in local, regional and national contexts, and specifically in areas of religious conflict. To get a feel for how our executive education works take a look at this short film shot at our most recent summer school held in Kosovo, in conjunction with their Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is heartening to see this young country taking a global lead in exploring how religion and foreign policy interact. In Sierra Leone the Faiths Act malaria prevention programme continues to break new ground. The team on the ground let us know just the other day that we have now reached over 1.7 million people in Sierra Leone with potentially life-saving malaria prevention messages delivered by faith communities. An incredible achievement. We have also signed a funding agreement with GlaxoSmithKline to ensure the future of this ground breaking programme is secure. Finally, I was excited to announce recently the appointment of the experienced journalist Martin Bright. He will be editing a new website launching in the Spring. It will provide an up-to-date analysis of the link between religion and conflict, bringing together leading academics and policy experts from across the world to provide compelling, informative and timely analysis and information. The aim over time is to equip people with the resources to make informed decisions in this field. All of this is happening at a crucial time. On a daily basis, we are seeing the terrible results of what happens when you don’t deal with religious prejudice and prevent conflict and extremism. As a Foundation, these tragic events make us even more resolute, and we are determined do to what we can to make a difference. Best wishes, Charlotte Keenan Chief Executive
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 12:52:57 +0000
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