Faiths Act is all about ordinary people of diverse faiths and backgrounds, coming together to do something extraordinary; organising simple, informal activities to raise awareness and funds to tackle deaths from malaria, a disease that preys on the defenceless. By working together on a shared cause, we can help build trust, understanding and respect between global communities while achieving the U
N Millennium Development Goals. In today's world, religious faith is a prominent feature of over 4 billion people’s lives and can play a positive or negative role. Those who try to use religion to promote conflict may be small in number, but they are well organised and often effective. We need to ensure that those who seek peace and harmony between religions are organised and vocal enough to tackle this threat. At the heart of Faiths Act is the belief that faith can be a force for good. We believe that core to all faith traditions is an impulse for compassion, for human kindness and to see beyond oneself. And that when people of faith act together they achieve more than they can alone. Faiths Act is spearheaded in the US, Canada, UK and India by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation’s Faiths Act Fellows. Last year the Faiths Act Fellows demonstrated what can be achieved when young people with a shared vision come together. The interfaith pairs inspired hundreds of events to raise awareness and funds to combat malaria, educated 40,000 people and raised over £200,000. In the process they fostered solidarity, friendship and understanding between the communities they worked with which has endured far beyond their year of interfaith service. In Sierra Leone we are establishing a multi-faith programme to train religious leaders in malaria health messaging.
