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Tony Blair Faith Foundation annual report published

Each year, publishing our annual report gives us a chance to reflect on just how quickly things change. All of us at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation are pleased at the growth of the Foundation’s projects even since April 2009, which is the period covered by this report ends.

The report details an incredibly busy year for the Foundation as our programmes were publically announced in May 2008. It was a time of careful piloting, development and then rapid growth as people around the world showed how keen they were to understand more about and work with people of other religions. After months of preparation and research we embarked on a number of flagship projects that are beginning to provide people with new opportunities to get involved in multi-faith work.

Our vision has remained constant: in a world where globalisation brings us increasingly closer together we perceive an urgent need to understand the interplay between faith and globalisation. We firmly believe that people of faith coming together to take joint action ultimately enriches their understanding of each other. We think that educating current and future leaders to understand the role of faith in the modern world is crucial for a sustainable future.

Most people, whether religious or not, would prefer to live in a world where there is peaceful co-existence between people of different faiths. But most do not have the opportunity, confidence, knowledge or relationships to engage in dialogue with people of other faiths. So we have tried to develop programmes that would appeal to people who weren’t already active in interfaith work. This vision was at the heart of our thinking in 2009 as we laid the seeds of our education and social action projects. We would like to thank all those whose good advice helped us shape our thinking.

This Annual Report takes us right back to the start of Face to Faith’s journey, then a pilot programme linking young people in schools from India and the UK among others. Now after intensive evaluation, the hard work of 52 educational experts to develop the curriculum, an international training schedule and dedicated local co-ordinators, Face to Faith is a global secondary school programme active in 12 countries. Students are busy updating their homepages on our secure online site, video-conferences across different continents are commonplace and the students and teachers are telling us their world view is being transformed. All this is only possible due to the scale of the ground work described in this report.

In April last year, our social action programme, Faiths Act was already bringing people together in new ways, across boundaries of faith and culture. Most of our volunteers had never had a meaningful interfaith encounter before – as newcomers to the interfaith world, last year they were taking their first tentative steps into multi-faith action on the MDGs supported by the Foundation. Today this has now become a truly international movement with volunteers from 70 countries committed to coming together with those of other faiths against malaria.

The report details the year spent making every preparation for the Faiths Act Fellows’ training and project. This has now paid off with 30 outstanding and inspirational young people taking everything they’ve learnt about malaria in Africa to mobilise local communities in the US, UK and Canada. Through campus tours, blood drives, multi-faith walks, dinners, dances and much more they are bringing people of faith together in new ways.

In April 2009 the Yale course, co-taught by Tony Blair, had completed its first semester of seminars, taking the themes of Faith and Globalisation to an exceptional group of students at Yale and by the end of the year the National University of Singapore had announced they were taking up the course. These institutions started the journey but as we look forward we are now on the cusp of a new Faith and Globalisation discipline.

With McGill in Montreal and Durham in the UK now part of the initiative, other leading research Universities are in the pipe line and the debate is increasingly moving beyond the classroom. No leader – political, economic or otherwise, can afford ignorance about how religions motivate people. And in a globalised world, they need to understand how different faiths interact in different societies and geographies. A recent conference on Faith and Malaria at Yale University brought together representatives from 9African states, policy makers, development professionals and business leaders. In London at the end of last year a 6 part seminar series in partnership with Oxfam, World Vision, DFID and Islamic Relief explored the theme of Faith and Development and currently Durham are running a series of public lectures under the banner of Faith and Globalisation.

Despite our fast growth some things have stayed the same: our working principles, focusing on collaboration, partnership and concrete outcomes and the brilliant support of our volunteers. We’re very grateful to all those who have contributed to the Foundation in so many ways. The challenge we face is urgent and important. The response needs to be practical, effective and transformative. It’s still early days for us and we’re keen to hear more from you about what we should be doing.

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