We were honoured to be asked by the established organisation Solutions Not Sides to work with them as part of their Youth Development Programme. This year the week-long programme took place at the University of Cambridge, hosted by the Woolf Institute.
We presented some of the work we do together, discussed the difficulties of being women and leaders in faith communities and explored some of the challenges we all face when speaking about hard issues in our communities.
The impact of the conflict in Israel and Palestine during the Summer was something that affected us all very deeply. We had a robust and honest conversation about how hard it can be to ask questions, to understand other perspectives for fear of offending.
The last part of the session we encouraged the young people to put questions in a hat that they wouldn’t necessarily feel comfortable asking directly. We were amazed and impressed by the depth and honesty and the session could have lasted hours longer!
It was truly an eye opening and enriching session for us to be a part of. These young people of Muslim, Jewish and other backgrounds really want to see things done differently, to create spaces for others like them to come together more, to develop bonds and trust with others to enable safe spaces to emerge on their campuses. The future is bright with young people like these in our universities!
Thank you to Solutions Not Sides for bringing us into this programme. A beautiful few hours spent working with people who really want to bring about change and often in very difficult circumstances.