Tackling religion-based hate crime on campus: faith ambassadors project

Hate crime in Higher Education can have a considerable impact on student wellbeing, academic attainment, student retention, institutional reputation as well as future student recruitment (Universities UK 2016). The report 'Changing the Culture’ (2016) by the Universities UK Task Force found that incidents of harassment, hate crime and violence do happen at UK universities, and highlighted a need for institutions to respond more effectively. As a follow up to this report, ‘Changing the Culture: One Year On’ (2018) found that progress was being made since the 2016 report, but more needed to be done. In light of this, the Office for Students (OfS) funded 11 universities in England with over £480,000 to tackle religion-based hate crime on campus. One of these projects was ‘Faith Ambassadors’ at Nottingham Trent University (NTU). In line with Nottingham City’s values of ‘Nottingham Together’ and ‘More in Common’, the aim of the Faith Ambassadors project is to prevent and tackle religion-based hate crime by promoting the positive values of faith –both at University and beyond – with voices from across the NTU student community. Correspondingly, a key finding of the evaluation of the Faith Ambassadors project includes Faith Ambassadors making a difference in the local community by building an interfaith dialogue through events and visits, and establishing a genuine sense of community and tolerance both on-and off-campus (including online).