The RDC is preparing for a widespread programme of ‘Religious Diversity and Anti-discrimination’ workshops through the country in 2020.
Each workshop is designed to fit the group of participants, so each workshop is different.
2019 Workshops have involved the people of one particular religious community, people brought together from different religious communities for the first time, teachers and people from schools in a particular local community and people involved in one city’s Social Work organisations. Feedback on these events has been overwhelmingly positive,
The workshop can provide Professional Development in religious diversity for people working in organisations such as Local Council or Government Departments or NGOs.
Religious diversity workshops encourage group collaboration, learning from one another, and provide activities which challenge you to reflect on your own understandings of religious identity in order to understand the importance of religious values and beliefs of others
Reports and feedback on past workshops has been overwhelmingly positive!
On Monday 18th November 2019, some 23 members of the Community Empowerment Unit of the Auckland City Council gathered for a staff professional development afternoon.
The head of this unit had previously experienced a ‘taster’ of the ‘Religious Diversity’ Workshop, and was convinced his entire unit needed engage with this. And engage they did! RDC Trustees, the Ven. Amala Wrightson and multi-faith tertiary chaplain Ricky Waters were the two facilitators,
Perhaps because those gathered were used to working as a Team, they quickly engaged with the activities and the conversations. Many reflecting at the end said that they had learned new things about their colleagues which would help them work better together. The evaluations were overwhelmingly positive and expressed lots of new learnings.
The three hour Workshop focused on Religious definitions, Guidelines for inter-religious dialogue, Quizzes around religious symbols and leaders, a Chronology of world religions, together with an exploration of the participants’ own spiritual perspectives and taking a stand on these. Some case studies of ‘religious discrimination’ (or maybe not) led to determining some of the challenges due to differences within and between religions and helped participants to better see how their own perspectives both challenged others, and could be challenged by others in a safe, friendly, and helpful way.
