Edinburgh Interfaith Association (EIFA) is co-creating with schools a new interactive website designed to improve Religious Literacy and support the delivery of Religious Moral Education (RME) in Scotland. It brings the learning and lived experience of people of different faiths and beliefs alive through a series of short bite size video clips conducted in interview form by young people. Here young people can embark on a ‘personal search journey’ find answers to big questions around meaning value and purpose in life and  appreciate the value of the beliefs values, practices and traditions of the main faith and belief systems.
 

The Ground We Share Project (GWS) will establish an interactive website, with bite size educational videos to promote Religious literacy and Religious and Moral Education (RME) subject delivery in Scotland and accessible UK wide. The programme would be co-created under the supervision of the EIFA Executive Director and RME teacher working with RME specialists, pupils and faith and belief representatives.
 
A large focus of the curriculum is to help pupils to embark on their own ‘personal search’ journey, “a process where children and young people engage in a search for meaning, value and purpose in life” (RME experience and outcomes document, RME EO). They are helped to do this through a key curriculum learning outcome which our website and its videos will help pupils to do as they, “learn about and from the beliefs, values, practices and traditions of Christianity and the world religions selected for study" (RME EO) through a series of interviews conducted by pupils with faith and belief representatives. 

We believe this learning programme will help pupils on their own ‘personal search journey’ in line with the curriculum to, “explore and establish values such as wisdom, justice, compassion and integrity and engage in the development of and reflection upon my own moral values,” and "to develop my beliefs, attitudes, values and practices through reflection, discovery and critical evaluation.”
 
It will bring the learning and lived experience of people of different faiths and beliefs alive through a series of interviews as they give their answers to young people on the big questions around what brings meaning value and purpose in life, encouraging young people to appreciate the value of the different beliefs values, practices and traditions in people’s lives. It will also assist pupils doing projects which seek the views of faith and belief traditions on contemporary moral issues.

We are aware of the growth in Islamophobia and antisemitism and misconceptions towards faith and this project tackles the misconceptions and highlights the value and importance of faith and belief systems in people’s lives. People also learn to appreciate commonalities and to empathize with those who might be discriminated against because of their perceived faith.

EIFA has a long successful track record of interfaith education programmes which are also recommended by Police Scotland Edinburgh to schools as an effective tool of educating against racism with current programmes reach over 4,000 pupils per year. This programme will build on that great work. Our diverse pool of speakers from different faith and belief traditions collaborating with schools, RME specialists and pupils from different schools will create an online website resource we believe will break down misconceptions and improve religious literacy, increasing knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the main faith and belief traditions.

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For more information please see the EIFA website by clicking here.

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