Collaboration of interreligious workers and the perception of help seekers in interreligious organizations

“if we do not meet with people from another faith or with another knowledge then we will not be able to integrate with each other. The purpose is to be ourselves, not to change one another but to understand one another…” (No. 1) The main aim of this thesis was to generate the needed knowledge on how interfaith organizations cooperate in their social work to aid help seekers despite the religious differences they may have, as well as to identify the obstacles the interfaith workers face in their cooperation. In addition, this thesis will also discuss the help seekers’ personal opinions concerning the help they get from the interreligious organizations. This research is a qualitative research with a case study design, based on materials collected from eighteen people by the use of semi-structured materials. The eighteen people have been represented by four leaders, two project leaders, one employee, four volunteers and seven help seekers. Both deductive[1] and inductive[2] methods were used in processing the themes used in this research. The research ethic has been considered in this paper. Both the social capital theory and the Allport’s intergroup contact theory were used in this thesis. These theories and former existing research helped in choosing the predetermined themes and in analyzing the results from the collected data which are: Religion and Freedom of religion, Common Goals, Respect- Understanding and acceptance, Responsibility and mission’s orientation, Neutral place, Interreligious dialogue, Applicable working platform, Complementary religion, Political view. The results of this thesis showed that the interfaith organizations can work as a compliment to one another in order to make the society work. This paper showed that interfaith organizations need to create common mutual norms with different roles in order to make the cooperation work. The common goals need to be very clear for both parties and additionally the structure of the system was very complex to explain to others or to introduce to the new workers. Furthermore, this thesis showed that there are people against interfaith cooperation for different reasons. Some of the obstacles the interfaith workers faced during their cooperation will be described more in the analysis part. Some of the barriers were fear from both the church members and the Stockholm Mosque on how the organization will run, which changes and consequences the church members will face and so forth. One of the interfaith organization leaders invited someone from outside the organization who gave a speech that didn’t align with their norms. They had cases which were forced to be taken up with the help of lawyers. It requires time to create and implement a functioning common structure. The common goal was not very clear for both parties and the system were very complex to explain to others or to introduce it to the new workers. Given the demographics, the volunteers had more extensive work experience and were mission oriented, which made them tend to focus on their commitments. The help seekers were very thankful concerning the help they got and wanted to do the same for others. The creation of trust through bonding and bridging was the central element or principles in this thesis, which are the keys to making the interfaith cooperation run. [1] Predetermined themes chosen with the help of theory [2] Themes resorted from the collected data through coding