It's the second day of the 2017 World Interfaith Harmony Week and many YES students and YES alumni are hard at work creating interfaith projects in their communities. Rida wrote the following story about her interfaith work after attending the YES Alumni Interfaith Harmony Workshop in Morocco in 2016.

By Rida Rizwan, YES 2013-2014, Pakistan, hosted by PAX in De Pere, WI

In December 2016, local YES alumni joined me to conduct The Interfaith Peace Building Workshop at SOS Village, an orphanage home in Faisalabad where children of all ages are welcome. Although all of these children receive basic education, and some even receive sponsorship to enroll in local universities, they still lack the exposure that other students have.

In terms of religion, Pakistan wouldn’t be classified as a diverse country; all of the children living in this specific orphanage are Muslims and have never interacted with any Christians or Hindus before.

In order to enrich them with some knowledge about other religions, I decided to host an interfaith workshop there. The goals of the project were:

• To advance understanding of religions and ideologies by study, dialogue and sharing about religious experiences;
• To identify commonalities between religions and ideologies, and;
• To foster an appreciation for the richness of diverse religions and ideologies around the world.

All the goals mentioned above were achieved in the workshop. A total of 50 orphans benefited from this workshop, with the help of other local alumni in the interactive sessions and activities.

In the end, we discovered the project did the following:

• Promoted friendly and positive behavior towards people with different religions;
• Shared happiness and smiles with all;
• Blended cultures, and;
• Enlightened students on religions different than theirs.