On March 31 – April 6, 2014 in Wroclaw (Poland) a common activity of Religions for Peace–European
Interfaith Youth Network (RfP EIYN) and World Student Christian Federation in Europe (WSCF) was held.
JECI-MIEC European Coordination is a member of EIYN so its Member Organisations could take
part. Romana Mysula (ET 2012-2014) attended this event.
It was 5-days regional conference, its aim was to bring people from different religious
backgrounds together, get the skills for possible interfaith dialogue .
As we know nowadays in the world there are many regions, where conflicts take
place and religious motives being part of them. So it was a great success that representatives
of so many faiths and countries could take part. Among them were Muslims, Jews, Sikh and
Christians (Orthodox, Roman-Catholic, Greek-Catholic, Methodist, Protestant, Lutheran, Anglican).
Geographical diversity was granted by having participants from Armenia, Austria, Belarus,
Bulgaria, France, Georgia, Germany, Romania, Poland, Israel, Ireland, UK and Ukraine.
All jointly thanks to the get-to-know and teambuilding activities could come to the
common ground and work well on the topics that were presented by the speakers (Culture
and Interculturality, Dialogue, Successful examples of dialogue), during workshops, role-play,
discussions.
It was very striking to find out that often we put labels on so many things and people,
have stereotypes about others without realizing it just in order to show own priority. We tried to
look at many things from a different perspective.
Panel discussion with guests from different
religions (Islam, Judaism and Christianity) was interesting.
A visit to the “Quarter of Mutual respect” where different religions activists work together and
are supported by city authorities (for what Wroclaw is special) was very enriching.
All in all it was a positive experience (Picture 10), which can be summed up in a short verse by the
participants:
Building bridges,
see and hear,
active listening,
loosing fear.
Brand new view-point,
interfaith,
being humble,
space that’s safe.
(Pictures by WSCF, Daniel Error, Romana Mysula)