OUR STORY
The Onyx Link Foundation was founded in 2017 by a small group of friends who wanted to make a positive change in their community. It was clear that their community had become increasingly fractured, and they identified an ‘us’ and ‘them’ demarcation. They recognised that this was largely due to worldviews that deviated from conscience, reason, and social common sense. Their mission was to reform these worldviews by challenging hate speech and radical ideologies and bringing their community closer together.
THE JOURNEY SO FAR
We kicked off our Resilient Gwent project in 2018 by hosting our first conference titled, ‘Getting together upon our shared values’. In 2019, we held a second titled, ‘Faith & Citizenship – From our shared values to our shared citizenship’. These events were a ground-breaking achievement. For the first time in interfaith dialogue, eight faith and belief representatives came together to sign declarations agreeing on their shared values and shared citizenship.
We recognised how powerful these declarations were and how they could have a positive impact on challenging hate speech and radical ideologies. We also recognised a need for young people to be involved in our projects and after consulting with the faith and belief representatives who had signed the declarations, we embarked on the first of our Resilient Gwent projects to challenge hate speech by promoting shared values in schools.
We believe positive change happens when we work together. We are now working with schools, teachers and the community in Newport to facilitate these changes.