Faiths Act

In November 2010, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution to proclaim the first week of February annually as World Interfaith Harmony Week.  The goal of this week is to emphasize the importance of interfaith dialogue and collaboration, and provide a platform for communities of different faiths, religions and beliefs to recognize their common values. World Interfaith Harmony Week is an effort to highlight the type work that the Faiths Act Fellows are committed to year round; focusing the world’s attention on faith communities working either independently or collaboratively, being a force for good.
On February 2nd at the University of Toronto, we celebrated the launch of World Interfaith Harmony Week 2012 with a beautiful evening of artistic expressions about faith and global responsibility, collectively raising funds for global health initiatives. We asked two broad questions; “How does your faith inspire you to act?” and “What does a better world look like and how do we get there?” and were pleasantly surprised at the overwhelming response this generated from photographers, visual artists, vocalists, dancers, musicians and poets. Performances ranged from a classical Catholic Liturgical Choir, to a Jewish Acappella Group to a solo Baha’i musician (Eric Farr) to an Ismaili Youth Choir, Christian Spoken Word Artists and Malian Bamako-style Djembe.
It was truly beautiful and inspiring to see all of our performers share their faith so openly, and receive so much respect and admiration in return.  It was so apparent that although each participant’s faith led them to have different outlooks or different beliefs, everyone was participating because they believed in a cause; to make the world a better, more peaceful place.
The success of the event, it turns out, is a metaphorical representation of my answer to our second question “what does a better world look like and how do we get there?”. Everyone had the opportunity to share their beliefs and opinions in safe and respectful place and to listen and learn from others. There was a huge variety of forms of expression, each as valuable as each other. These differences, in artistic format, in tempo, and in style, are what created the beauty of the show.  Most importantly, everyone present was there intentionally, for a shared purpose. Collectively, we contributed over $1500 towards malaria treatment research in Uganda. There was no better way to show how much we can achieve when we work together, in harmony.