Blair Foundation keen to rope in Indian schools, varsities

Updated on: Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Reaching out to students to promote inter-faith harmony, Tony Blair Faith Foundation said it is keen to rope in more Indian schools and varsities to impart programmes that increase understanding of views of different religions on global issues such as environment, health and poverty.

The foundation which already has a presence in about 80 schools in the country under its 'face to faith' initiative is seeking to "expand the programme significantly" covering other schools, founder and patron of the foundation Tony Blair told reporters here.

Under this initiative, the schools are linked to others through IT to learn about each other, the attitude of different religions to global issues such as environment.

The former British prime minister, who interacted with several religious leaders earlier in the day discussing the foundation's initiatives in education and health sectors, said they are also looking to add an Indian university along with eight other well-known universities abroad offering a course on 'faith and globalisation'.

"We are now in eight different universities worldwide and we want to add an Indian university or may be more than one," he said.

"The programme began in Yale and we are now in different universities, but we want to come and have an Indian partner university as well," he added.

Each university creates a course surrounding faith and globalisation which is adapted to suit their needs and reflect the interest of the locality.

Every course has a collaboration between three to eight different department and disciplines. Yale University, the National University of Singapore, the Peking University in China among others teach between 25 to 120 under-graduate and graduate students supported by the foundation, he said.

Blair said during the interaction with the religious leaders, "We agreed that in today's world, it is really important that young people learn about different faiths and learn how to live with them and co-exist peacefully."

The foundation also seeks to mobilise people of different faiths to be part of the anti-malaria campaign which kills around a million people a year, he said.

"We chose the anti-malaria campaign because it is one of the millennium development goals of UN and something where people and faith can do very constructive in African countries, where Christians and Muslims can use their churches and mosques as distribution centres for anti-malaria campaign," he said.

Blair Foundation keen to rope in Indian schools, varsities

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