Cambridge University and the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation use Social Entrepreneurship to Improve Jewish-Muslim Relations

LONDON, July 27, 2011 -

The Ariane de Rothschild Fellowship brings together Muslim and Jewish social entrepreneurs from the UK, France and USA to participate in groundbreaking programme that combines cross-cultural dialogue with business skills development, between July 15-29 2011.

The programme aims to foster a shared civic identity and enables participants to support one another in creating sustainable social change.

24 international social entrepreneurs across the fields of conflict resolution, third world development, interfaith, business and the arts will participate this year.

The teaching model was developed by leading academics including Patrice Brodeur, Canada Research Chair in Islam at University of Montreal, Professor Bruce Kogut of Columbia Business School, and Gareth Stedman Jones, Director, Centre of History and Economics at Kings College, Cambridge.

The programme includes tutorial sessions at Cambridge’s Muslim College with Dr Tim Winters, hailed as Britain’s most influential Muslim by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre.

The Programme has core components:

• Business skills training
• Providing scholarship on the history and politics between Jews and Muslims including issues of identity, foundations of Zionism and contemporary Islamist movements
• Practical dialogue workshops

Firoz Ladak, Executive Director of the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation: “The Fellowship takes a unique approach to building cross cultural relations, by moving away from conventional discourse that focused only on religious and cultural themes, to building an action driven network of social entrepreneurs.”

Stephen Shashoua, 2010 Fellowand Director of Three Faiths Forum: “The fellowship brings together diverse social entrepreneurs and enables us to work together beyond dialogue.”

Mussurut Zia, 2010 Fellow and Director of Practical Solutions, a UK organisation dealing with forced marriage and honour based violence: “The Fellowship helped me see other fellows as more than just Jews or Muslims, but as people united by the desire to promote social justice.”

Notes to editors:

For more information please visit www.adrfellowship.org/home/ or email press@unitascommunications.com

For information on this year’s participants: www.adrfellowship.org/2011_fellows.pdf

The AdR includes a humanities component delivered by the Centre for History and Economics, King’s College. Cambridge’s Judge Business School hosts the programme and has a social entrepreneurship component delivered by Business School faculty members who are engaged in social enterprise and community development research.  Their involvement ensures academic rigor and relevance and builds on the School’s strength and commitment to research, policy and practice in this field.

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