CRID’s intervention model is designed to respond to personal factors, relational factors and structural factors that inhibits appreciation and respect for religious and cultural diversity among communities, especially young people.

In the pilot phase, we encountered young people at their family spaces, religious spaces, cultural spaces and state spaces using multifaceted strategies in different contexts across the 6 Countries.

We increased their knowledge of their own and other people’s faith and culture. We also improved their attitudes, emotional response & empathy towards others, which helped them to overcome faith, culture and/or gender-based stereotypes and negative perceptions towards others.

The project has also imparted skills and practices of inclusive interfaith and intercultural activities and built common ground among people holding different worldviews.

The project actions have improved social and religious norms such as empathy, love for strangers, forgiveness, as well as gender norms. They have also strengthened community trust, support and influence, significantly reducing potential for conflict. These results inform our desire to take to scale this model.

The CRiD program acknowledges that there are many effective inter-cultural and inter-religious dialogue approaches, processes, methods and tools that are being employed by faith groups and institutions yet not documented. In the pilot phase, the program carefully monitored, interrogated, catalogued and documented some of the approaches and models employed by its partners in the 6 Countries of focus.

In addition to undocumented inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue approaches, there were knowledge gaps within the faith communities on what religious ideologies and narratives were being used by violent extremists to radicalize and recruit young people to their groups and organizations. The program hence conducted studies on existing religious narratives that fuel intolerance and extremism across cultures and religions, and systematically documented religious alternative narratives in Christian and Islamic perspectives that support understanding, tolerance, respect and gender equality.

In appreciation of the larger context in which the targeted young people live, the program further commissioned formative research (baseline) in all the geographical project areas in the 6 Countries. The research collected, analyzed and presented information in relation to Personal, Relational and Structural factors.