Westhill NASACRE Awards
The first Westhill/NASACRE Awards were made in 2005. Since then there have been further annual rounds of Awards to SACREs, for local projects that involve schools. The Awards are funded by generous grants from the Westhill Foundation and are managed and coordinated by NASACRE.
What are Westhill/NASACRE Awards?
Young people are growing up and receiving their education in a plural and diverse context that embraces both a wide range of religious traditions and communities and also covers a spectrum of stances of belief and non-belief.
Young people therefore need to:
- develop skills that will enable them to live constructively in and with this diversity: skills of listening to each other without prejudice, of discovering the common ground, of accepting the differences, of building confidence in their own identities.
- be able to encounter and talk with those who have beliefs and views different from their own, to break down barriers constructed through ignorance and fear of the unknown, and to challenge the resulting stereotypes which emerge in popular culture. Personal development of this kind is an essential tool in promoting a healthy, cohesive and harmonious society and in enabling individuals to flourish in a context of rich but challenging diversity.
The Westhill/NASACRE Awards encourage schools to engage with diversity through projects which will generate compelling learning experiences in RE for young people, relevant to today's context. Each year grants of up to £4,000 have been awarded to support suitable projects submitted by schools through their SACREs. The Awards develop creative engagement among young people and build up a bank of ideas and good practice for others to use in their own ventures, to the benefit of their locality and society more generally.
Who’s on the Panel? How does it operate? Why Westhill, anyway? This article seeks to answer these questions.
Over the years the response to the Awards programme has been gratifyingly enthusiastic and fruitful. Many imaginative and stimulating proposals have been submitted.
Find information about the individual award winning projects by clicking on the year menu tabs.