A newly published Western Sydney University report highlights Catholic Mission’s Interfaith Encounters program as a vital response to the issue of racism, including Islamophobia and antisemitism, and increasing racialisation of religion in Australia in recent years.
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Interfaith Encounters
The Interfaith Encounters program creates safe spaces where young people from different cultural and religious backgrounds can explore common values, build friendships, and learn from one another’s unique perspectives.
Increasing racial and religious tensions in Australia, with rising incidents of Islamophobia and antisemitism, highlight the need for community-driven responses that promote inclusivity, compassion, and unity across diverse backgrounds.
Catholic Mission’s Interfaith Encounters program provides a practical component to the study of religion, enhancing understanding of cultural and religious diversity and building confidence in standing against discrimination.
The program provides the platform for students and staff to develop new friendships, celebrate difference, deepen faith, and promote peace and social cohesion.
Workshops and hands-on learning experiences equip young people with the skills to address racism and prejudice, empowering them to become advocates for dialogue and understanding within their schools and communities.
Each inter-school program is preceded by partnership meetings with staff from each school and a focus group held with students to co-develop the specific program.
The inter-school program:
- Creates connections between schools and community organisations to support them in proactively furthering harmony in their own communities.
- Offers students access to a range of religious, spiritual, and ideological worldviews through face-to-face encounters.
- Provides experiential learning opportunities that support students in critically analysing possible misunderstandings and distrust between people of different faiths, cultures, and ideologies, and furthermore, leads them to identify ways in which they can effectively respond and be active participants in building social cohesion.
Participants will:
- Deepen their understanding of identity & belonging (both their own and others')
- Appreciate the influences of bias and stereotypes.
- Experience visiting sacred places.
- Develop & practice leadership and communication skills.
- Engage with students from other faith and cultural communities and create lasting friendships, increasing curiosity, empathy & understanding of one another.
Evaluation Report
The report, conducted in collaboration Western Sydney University’s Centre for Western Sydney and Challenging Racism Project, highlights key outcomes:
- Increased appreciation for cultural diversity.
- Improved interfaith understanding.
- Greater confidence to combat discrimination.
With its focus on empowering youth through workshops and hands-on learning, the program equips participants to address prejudice and lead change within their schools and communities.
Delivered in partnership with Together for Humanity, the Centre for Western Sydney and the Challenging Racism Project, the program is a model for fostering social harmony.
To learn more about the program’s impact and explore how communities can adopt similar approaches, download the full report from Western Sydney University.
Together, we can bridge divides and build a brighter future for all.
Catholic Mission Interfaith Program 2024
This video was recently created for purposes of program stakeholder engagement. It shares our program design and vision, student voice and partner voice.
Interfaith 2024
This video is our first youth led video project that is fully filmed by the students using their own devices during the program. Students participated in lunch time video skills workshops. Catholic Mission’s communications team supported production of the resource – see Appendix 8 Digital engagement- Youth Project Interfaith Encounters to support this project idea as a first step towards increasing our youth engagement methods to amplify voices of young people and tackle tough issues. For this pilot project, students shared their video interviews with us via Dropbox after events and we edited this film to present back to them at their final gathering this June 2024.
St Benedict’s application video for the “Together for Humanity National Award for intercultural and interfaith excellence” – June 2024
This video is of students from St Benedict’s, a Catholic College in Oran Park, talking about impact of the program for them in increasing their awareness, fostering new relationships and deeper perspectives on things that can’t be taught in the classroom. Students express the power of the practical and experiential nature of the program in achieving personal transformation. Lara talks 2mins into the video about information resource they created as a response and acting in response with an information source about the conflict in Palestine. Students share the bubble they were in prior to this program. This has been a common theme for this program.
Interfaith Program Malek Fahd and St Patrick’s Short
This video was created in 2023 and follows the partnership between Malek Fahd Islamic School and St Patrick’s College that year.
Funding for the Interfaith Encounters inter-school program has been provided by the NSW Government through Multicultural NSW under its COMPACT program. The program is led by Catholic Mission and delivered in partnership with schools and both faith based and secular community organisations.
Catholic Mission is continually seeking funding and partnership opportunities to support a wider reach of this program and we welcome enquiries and donations.
For further information please contact:
Catherine Towiro
Interfaith Encounters Program Coordinator
PH: 02 9919 7800
Direct: 02 9919 7823