World Faiths Development Dialogue

Established in 1998 by James D. Wolfensohn, then President of the World Bank, and Lord George Carey, then Archbishop of Canterbury, The World Faiths Development Dialogue(WFDD) bridges between the worlds of faith and secular development. WFDD supports dialogue and conferences, fosters communities of practice, collects case-studies on faith-based organizations, and promotes understanding on religion and development, with formal relationships to the World Bank and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Peace, Religion, and World Affairs. WFDD has two central objectives. The first is to reinforce, underscore, and publicize the synergies and common purpose of religions and development institutions addressing poverty. Given the jaundiced views of many faith leaders about development institutions (including the World Bank), and widely acknowledged ignorance about faith institutions within the development world, the search for common purpose has particular importance and can be viewed at least in part as a “constituency-building” imperative. The second purpose is to explore, through thoughtful and probing dialogue, issues on which there is no consensus and where common ground is unclear. This applies among different faith traditions, even within faiths, and between faiths and development institutions. The context in which WFDD operates in 2009 is somewhat changed from when the organization was formed ten years ago. Action-oriented partnerships between faith-inspired and “secular” development institutions, exemplified by the work of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, the Center for Interfaith Action on Global Poverty, and the Berkley Center’s program on Religion and Development, signal in some ways a maturation of the dialogue process that began among a small group of leaders at Lambeth Palace in 1998. WFDD is supporting some of the analytical work necessary to assess the efficacy of these partnerships and continues to support forward-thinking dialogue around them.