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Common Ground: Engaging Religious Dimensions in the Search for Peace

A Conversation with Sharon Rosen

December 16, 2021
12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. EST
Location: Online Zoom Webinar

The Revitalizing Global Religious and Interfaith Networks project seeks to understand how global religious and interfaith networks can better mobilize their strengths and partnerships with international organizations, NGOs, and governments. As a first step, can we identify opportunities and obstacles that enable us to move forward in practical ways? Alongside the important work of religious institutions, non-religiously affiliated organizations play increasingly significant roles in interreligious partnerships. Search for Common Ground (Search), the largest international NGO dedicated to peacebuilding working to end violent conflict by transforming the way communities interact with one another, away from adversarial violent approaches to collaborative solutions, is deeply engaged in this work. Their purposeful religious engagement has expanded in recent years and offers important lessons.

This event featured Sharon Rosen, the global director of religious engagement at Search, in conversation with Berkley Center Senior Fellow Katherine Marshall. They discussed Rosen’s work at Search and the changes that she has seen, including her leadership of the religious engagement portfolio. They also discussed the strategic challenges of working as a non-faith based organization in religious spaces, the significance of religious literacy in conflict, and the five Ps of the global agenda (people, planet, peace, prosperity, and partnership) and how those Ps guide the work of organizations like Search.

Participants