MEET YOUR NEIGHBOUR PROJECT – Ramadan Edition
Iftar(Fast-breaking) Dinners
Come and Explore Different Faiths and Cultures!
Enjoy a Ramadan Dinner at a Muslim Family Home
Intercultural Dialogue Institute cordially invites you to participate in a unique experience at your “neighbour’s home”. Don’t miss this opportunity!
The Meet Your Neighbour Project is designed to give participants the opportunity to experience the special and sacred observances of other faiths. These dinners take place in an intimate family setting with a home cooked meal which provides the best setting for learning about other faiths and cultures firsthand.
Featuring now:
Iftar(Fast-breaking Dinners) Dinners
Any date between May 5 – June 3
When Ramadan comes, IDI Toronto’s “Meet Your Neighbour” program takes a new turn with the arrival of iftar dinners. The program is year-around, however the interest triples when Iftar dinners are there. For Muslims, the iftar (breaking-of-fast) dinners are a crucial part of the holy month of Ramadan, and they try their best to avoid eating alone. So they either host a friend, relative or a neighbour; or they are hosted by one of these. We live in one of the friendliest and neighbourly city in the world, how lovely it is to break your fast with a neighbour you just met…
Please visit the following webpage for photos from previous years’ family iftars we’ve organized in the GTA: Meet Your Neighbour Initiative
Are you interested in sharing your Iftar dinner with a guests who want to learn about Islam and your tradition? If so, let us know how many people you can host and what demographic is best appropriate with your family.
You may have heard of Ramadan and Iftar, you may even know the specific religious connotation behind it, but have you ever experienced a meal with a family who is observing it?
Please visit meetyourneighbour.ca to get more information and to register as a host or guest.
*Would you like to learn more or have questions, please send an email to jkovacs@idialogue.ca or call 647 502 6565.
Why Meet Your Neighbour?
Food brings people together and with this simple idea in mind, the Intercultural Dialogue Institute is proud to introduce to you the Meet Your Neighbours Project. This initiative aims to provide space for people of differing religious and cultural traditions to get-to-know one another in the cozy intimacy of each others’ homes. Meet Your Neighbour dinners seek to build community through sharing between members of the various faith and cultural traditions throughout Canada.
Abraham, “Friend of Allah” (c.f. Q4:125) and beloved patriarch for Christians, Muslims and Jews alike, is seen as a leading model of moral and ethical conduct. The biblical tradition illustrates the value of “hospitality” in the story of Abraham at Mamre (Gen. 18:1-33) where Abraham selflessly provides food, shelter and comfort to three unknown travellers in his and his wife Sara’s humble tent. Over the centuries, each of the three traditions has developed a unique cultural and theological expression of this value. Now our kitchens and living rooms provide the same space for hosting temporary gatherings of inter-religious and intercultural encounter.
Meet Your Neighbour programs are get-togethers filled with both gifts of hospitality and conversation with the goal of relationship building between various ethnic and religious communities in Canada Through these dialogues, communities can be built and engaged in order to develop relationships based on mutual respect and trust. After all, the sharing of a meal is a sacred space where ripples of change can occur and Meet Your Neighbour aims to spearhead the grassroots effort to rid our communities of intolerance and fear and to foster understanding and respect.
