Country: United Kingdom
City:
Sarah Oliver is Associate Director of Global Programmes for Youth Engagement for
the United Religions Initiative (URI). Sarah works to support, connect, resource and
inspire young people across the network, with an intention of building the capacity of
young people to lead and create peace in their own communities and around the world.
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Sarah shared about her goals and future projects in interfaith peacebuilding. She said
that one of the great challenges faced by young people is the assumption from elders
that they are not productive and they spend their time on social media. Because of this
wrong assumptions, the role of youth are not valued and respected. She also shared
that it is important to include youth as decision makers and also provide support and
enough resources for making it as a meaningful leadership.
―The values and the principles shared by religions are about love and connection. We
are connected not just to each other but to the planet and to the world. Each of our
faith traditions share that and it's asking people kind of where your conviction comes
from like where your purpose and your drive comes from for for wanting to create a a
better world and I think our interfaith communities and people of faith have an
important message again to share in terms of why we need to be looking after our
planet better and why we need to be really changing our mindset in terms of how we
think about the earth and that it is not there for our consumption and for resources just
to be used and abused but really seeing ourselves as part and as one with the whole
world.‖ This is how Sarah see the connection between faith and climate change
actions.