Lunch & Learn: Making Faith & Religion Alive

Our speaker this month was Pierre Rousseau, a professor at Faculte St. Jean who recently took his class to visit Temple Beth Ora, Edmonton’s Reform synagogue. We asked him to reflect on how that kind of in-person experience with people, traditions and houses of worship from a variety of faith traditions is important in building understanding and respect for diverse religious traditions. What other courses promote interfaith understanding? What are the students’ backgrounds and what is the impact of this program on them? What are the discussions like after a visit? Have you seen any long-lasting effect of their experiences visiting other churches/temples/synagogues, etc.?

IDERD: Racism – What do we know and where do we go?

The Canadian Multicultural Education Foundation, The Edmonton Interfaith Centre & The United Nations Association Canada (Edmonton) commemorated the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 20th, 2022 at 2 p.m. over Zoom. We explored the question “Racism: what do we know and where do we go?” with panel participants: Charis Auger, Steven Camp, Satya Das & Salima Versi. World music provided by Dr. Michael Frishkopf

Lunch & Learn: Canada’s Sexual Exploitation Laws: What’s at Stake?

Kathy King (www.missingcara.ca) and Kate Quinn (www.ceasenow.org) provided a global overview of how different countries approach criminalization, legalization and the Equality Model. We addressed root causes of sexual exploitation and sex trafficking and the multiple impacts. This topic was very timely because the federal Justice Committee is hearing presentations in February – March about whether to remove all laws (total decriminalization) or to maintain Canada’s version of the Equality Model.