Archive for the ‘buddhist’ tag
The Tony Blair Faith Foundation’s: 2011-2012 Faiths Act Fellowship
The 2011-2012 Faith Acts Fellows
from The Tony Blair Faith Foundation
Those who seek to cause religious conflict are small in number but highly motivated, organized and funded. While there are billions of people who are engaged in their own faith tradition, many have not yet learned how to live or work together well with those of different traditions.
The Tony Blair Faith Foundation decided to tackle this challenge through organising a year-long Fellowship that brought together young people of different faiths to work toward better interfaith action. The Foundation selected 33 outstanding future leaders, who between July 2011 and June 2012, worked in interfaith pairs around the world. They built understanding between different religious communities by mobilising them around the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), in particular around malaria prevention.
The Fellows represented a diverse cross section of the faith traditions: 11 were Christian, 10 Muslim, 5 Jewish, 3 Hindu, 2 Buddhist, 1 Baha’i, 1 Sikh and 1 Quaker. Thirty of the Fellows were placed in multi-faith pairs in Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the USA.
Buddhist Leader Highlights Need for Education, Empowerment in Advance of Rio+20 Meeting
Daisaku Ikeda, President of Soka Gakkai International, a Buddhist movement based in Japan. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.
from PRNewswire
Daisaku Ikeda, president of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) Buddhist association, issued a proposal on June 6 stressing that empowerment of individuals and communities is vital to achieving a sustainable global society. The proposal puts forward ideas related to the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development opening in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on June 20.
Ikeda states: “It is unacceptable to consider the pursuit of sustainability as simply a matter of adjusting policies in order to find a better balance between economic and ecological imperatives. Rather, sustainability must be understood as a challenge and undertaking requiring the commitment of all individuals … constructing a society that accords highest priority to the dignity of life.”
The proposal, entitled “For a Sustainable Global Society: Learning for Empowerment and Leadership,” emphasizes that education is key.
Ikeda was a strong advocate of establishing the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) which ends in 2014, and he now calls for a successor framework, an educational program for a sustainable global society to start in 2015, focused on fostering agents of positive change. Such a program should give rise to empowerment, and beyond that, to leadership, if it is to generate real transformation.
Ikeda puts forward ideas for far-reaching institutional reform of the United Nations agencies responsible for development and environmental protection. He suggests the consolidation of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and related agencies to create one integrated “global organization for sustainable development.”
