(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - The Campus Ambassador program was launched by Baroness Warsi yesterday at the House of Lords. The program has enlisted 18 Muslim and Jewish students working as "campus ambassadors" at 10 universities around the UK to bring people from the two faiths together.
All the students had applied to be part of the 2011 Campus Ambassadors Programme, which received applications last fall.
Participating students receive monthly training sessions in leadership, strategy and conflict resolution and be expected to organise activities on their campuses, such as art and drama projects, and volunteering in the community, that involve Muslims and Jews working together.
The idea is that the team of students will act as role models for good inter-faith relations.
The scheme is being run by the Coexistence Trust, a London-based charity dedicated to improving relationships between Muslim and Jewish students. Set up in 2005 as a parliamentary network to combat Islamophobia and anti-semitism, its focus changed three years ago to concentrate on universities.
"We thought that while the parliamentary side was important, we should focus on the next generation, and universities were where we could find the new generation of leaders," says Shahnaz Ahsan, manager of the trust.
The charity also runs Campus FaithHub, which encourages Muslim and Jewish students to leave their university bubble and volunteer together in the local community, as well as a scheme in which they get together to discuss religious texts.
The Coexistence Trust stresses that it is about promoting constructive dialogue between students who are open to learning more about each other, but do not have the opportunity.
"We have found there are pockets of students who want to be working together and are quite excited when they see there is an external organisation supportive of what they are doing," says Ahsan. She hopes it will "set a new tone of respectful debate on campus and avoid the polarisation we have seen in recent years".
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