About
Educating the next generation
Face to Faith is our innovative schools programme for 12-17 year olds, which is active in 19 countries and growing. Face to Faith connects students worldwide via a secure website where they interact. The programme features facilitated videoconferences where students discuss global issues from a variety of faith and belief perspectives. Through Face to Faith, students gain the dialogue skills required to prevent conflict by breaking down religious and cultural stereotypes.
The Face to Faith program is unique and far reaching in its potential to promote religious literacy among young people from different nations and religious traditions." Professor Harry Stout, Yale University
Aims
- To promote cross-cultural understanding – equipping young people with key 21st century skills needed to live in a world of diverse faiths and beliefs.
- To provide young people with the knowledge, skills and competencies needed for meaningful inter and intra-faith dialogue across a range of cultures, containing diverse and often conflicting views.
- To give students key mediation and negotiation skills so that they are able to hold meaningful and respectful interfaith discussions – even if their views diverge.
The curriculum
The programme has been developed by an international group of advisors from education and faith sectors. It is underpinned by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's Toledo Guiding Principles on Teaching about Religions and Beliefs in Public Schools (PDF 825 KB).
It allows teachers to use the resources creatively and with a degree of flexibility. Face to Faith is not used as an alternative curriculum but as a resource to be implemented within current curricula constraints.
Teachers, to date, have used Face to Faith to deliver elements of:
- science
- humanities
- social studies
- language
- religious and civic education
- In addition, Face to Faith can be used and accredited against the Cambridge Assessment IGCSE in Global Perspectives and, is recognised by the International Baccalaureate (IB) as a resource that students may use for their community service work.
"It is so much more interesting to hear directly from those of another religion than simply reading about them in a book." Student, New Delhi, India
Global programme
We currently offer the programme in 19 countries; Australia, Canada, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Mexico, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Singapore, Ukraine, Kosovo, UAE, UK and USA.
Teaching resources
We provide registered schools with:
- A set of teaching resources based around global issues
- Local teacher training and post-training support
- A series of facilitated video-conferences
- Access to a secure and moderated website
- A set of proposed social action projects
Cost
Currently, the Face to Faith is free to all registered schools, including installation of video-conferencing software. Please complete our registration form if you're interested in joining Face to Faith.
