One of the main highlight of this year’s World Interfaith Harmony Week 2020 celebration of the Silsilah Dialogue Movement is the Symposium on Dialogue towards Harmony. The special occasion invited at least 250 participants coming from different government offices, sectors from society, different representatives in the community and other partners of Silsilah.

This activity invites leaders to present three realities in the context of the Philippines and Zamboanga. It is also a plan what they can do together presenting their ideas, plans and aspiration to the Mayor of Zamboanga city and other authorities to listen and support any doable plan.

The participants are encouraged to raise their concern with the three realities and challenges given by the speakers for the activity.

Many participants were interested to ask about the law mentioned for IP’s and others are curious about what we can do more to spread the initiative of the World Interfaith Harmony Week.

The participant raised the question about what we can do more to spread the spirit of the initiative knowing that others barangays already celebrated the neighbors in Harmony with the collaboration of Emmaus and Silsilah Dialogue Movement.

This Open forum not only addresses the concern of the participant who asks the question, but it also gave a great impact to those who listens the question and answer part. The Open forum gave all the people in the room the opportunity to think, listen and understand the dynamic of ideas and how the speakers answer them in full of wisdom and knowledge.

The best part of this activity is the signing of the Peace Accord where all participants are encouraged to affix their signature in the space provided after the Peace Accord statement. This is the Dialogue and Peace Accord where it emphasizes that February 6, 2020, guided by the deeper understanding of peace; we make this Dialogue and Peace Accord adopting the same message of the document “Human Fraternity”.

The activity ended with the Community singing of “Heal the World” where all people from different cultures and religions sang one song, with one hope and with one heart to heal the world and make it a better place.

Truly, Silsilah has always been with great determination to spread the initiative of the World Interfaith Harmony Week. An initiative where we believe that may be challenging especially here in Mindanao but if we will work with sincere hearts, step by step, we can live a better world.

I always believe that it takes two ends to build a bridge. Looks like how Silsilah became the head point of the bridge and invites people from the other end to be partners, hence together they will meet halfway to make something significant and to make that bridge stronger and firmer. A bridge as strong as Dialogue where it unites people regardless of their faith, culture and religions and a dialogue that comes from God and brings people back to God.

 

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