Now in its fourth year, the 2018 KAICIID Fellows gathered for their first field training of the Programme in Indonesia.

Twenty peace practitioners of the KAICIID International Fellows Programme from all over the world representing six of the world’s religions convened in Jakarta, Indonesia, from 10 to 15 May. During the meeting, the Fellows took part in interreligious dialogue training, visited Jakarta’s houses of worship and designed interreligious dialogue projects to promote social cohesion in their communities, all within the setting of interreligious Jakarta.

Each KAICIID Fellow has his or her own unique stories of dialogue and brings together diverse communities to inspire them to live together with respect.  During their gathering in Jakarta, the Fellows visited mosques, churches and Hindu and Confucian temples to dialogue with leaders from these communities. For some of the Fellows, this will be their first time visiting the houses of worship of other religions, and a firsthand experience of Indonesian cultural and religious diversity.

Following the residential training, the Fellows will implement their training initiatives to promote mutual understanding and social cohesion in their own ethnically and religiously diverse communities. Previous interreligious projects have included community dialogues, study trips for students, research, writing and distributing interreligious dialogue manuals and even publishing a dialogue game app.

The training will coincided with a meeting of the Indonesian members of the Fellows Network. KAICIID has already trained 16 Fellows from Indonesia who will meet with the 2018 Fellows to discuss and plan further interreligious dialogue initiatives in Indonesia.

KAICIID in Indonesia

The International Dialogue Centre has worked in Indonesia with members of the Fellows Programme, as well as through the now completed Multi-religious Collaboration for the Common Good (MCC) programme. The MCC Programme was designed to build capacity to undertake IRD to strengthen social cohesion and focused on capacity building and education. Alongside our local partner, the Center for Dialogue and Cooperation among Civilisations (CDCC), we established four Modules on peace education in Indonesian which were launched in June 2016 and published a Baseline Study of IRD in Indonesia, covering some 2000 individuals in five cities, which Indonesian organizations have used and developed further.

The KAICIID Fellows Programme

The KAICIID International Fellows Programme is a one-year learning and training programme that will empower institutions that train future religious leaders by providing capacity building to select teachers and dialogue practitioners. The aim is to facilitate dialogue encounters by giving these teachers the tools, experience, networks and knowledge to pursue interreligious dialogue and further be able to prepare their own students and community members to become facilitators and leaders in interreligious dialogue. In addition to interreligious dialogue training, the Fellows will also learn how to train their own students in conflict transformation so as to be active peace advocates in their respective communities.

The Fellows Network

After graduating from the programme, the Fellows will join the KAICIID International Fellows Network, a network of more than 100 Fellows from more than 30 countries representing 8 world religions. These Fellows have reached nearly 3,600 people worldwide through 60 initiatives, and continue to work in promoting dialogue and social cohesion globally at the community level.

For more information, visit kaiciid.org/fellows.