Facilitator: George Bednar

Always seeking help young people to have open, honest conversation across faiths, beliefs and cultures, George has been facilitating for the Faith & Belief Forum for more than four years. She has seen repeatedly that the value of the Faith & Belief Forum’s workshops is the way they provide a non-academic space to reflect on elements of students’ identities, and the identity of those they may never have met, in a safe space.

She has frequently observed how much young people gain from the individual activities in the Faith & Belief Forum’s schools workshops. In particular, the combination of skills-based and knowledge-based activities goes a long way to raising young people’s confidence in asking challenging questions and understanding concepts of identity.

One recent workshop stands out for George. She was delivering at a Sixth Form conference for students from different schools, and the students were extremely responsive to the workshop’s content and activities, with a number of interesting conversations taking place. The striking thing from the students’ feedback, however, was that the self-reflection activities had been the first time many of them had had a chance in their life to consider their own identities, and it was something that the students had found particularly rewarding and powerful.

To help facilitators like George to create spaces for young people to explore the complexity of individual and collective identity, please consider making a donation to the Faith & Belief Forum.

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