The Interfaith Iftar brought together one hundred young Londoners (aged 16-30) from different faiths, or none, to discuss how to understand each other’s perspectives and how to bring communities in London together. Each group had the opportunity to discuss their ideas within an allocated cluster group before taking up their main ideas with three distinguished speakers: Cardinal Vincent Nichols; The Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, and Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.
Further to the Interfaith Iftar, the Foundation carried out an impact assessment and asked everyone involved how they found the day. Some of the highlights from the report are below,
– 96% of the young attendee respondents agreed/ strongly agreed that they felt positive about the Interfaith Iftar experience.
– 90% of the young attendee respondents agreed/strongly agreed that they were inspired by the event.
– 72% of the young attendee respondents agreed/strongly agreed’ that they would keep in contact with the people that they had met at the Interfaith event (there was some evidence of attendees adding ‘friends’ to their snapchats, exchanging emails addresses or directing attendees to relevant web resources – such as the Mitzvah day.
The pre-Iftar evaluation revealed that 34% of the young attendees wanted to learn more about other faiths and wanted an opportunity to discuss their faiths with others.
– An increase of 33% in knowledge about other faiths (agree & strongly agree) was evidenced from pre- to post- evaluation.
– Pre-Iftar 57% felt confident that they were knowledgeable about faiths other than their own. This rose to 90% post-Iftar).
The full report can be read here: Interfaith Iftar 2017 Evaluation Report copy
