Girls from Hasmonean High School swapped ideas on social action with peers from an Islamic faith school in a new programme designed to improve relations between Muslims and Jews.

The Mill Hill school hosted a group from the Al-Khoei School in Brondesbury in the “Dream It, Do It” initiative run by Faiths Forum for London.

The 30 girls were split into smaller, mixed groups and asked to come up with a social action project.

In the return session at the Islamic school later this month, the teams will have to pitch their proposal to a panel of judges, competing for up to £200 to put it into action.

The students have previously met in an interfaith coding programme which the forum has run for a number of years.

Rabbi Natan Levy, FFL’s head of operations, said, “The Israel-Palestine conflict in May revealed that interfaith organisations like ours needed to do more work getting young people from Jewish and Muslim communities to collaborate on impactful projects, to overcome the negative stereotypes and labels that were threatening to become the new normal in both communities.”

Raphael Kessler, head of computing at Hasmonean, said, “It was great to see how quickly the girls were getting along, chatting about the relevant topic and their lives in general. It was very apparent that any differences of religion or background were irrelevant and they saw each other as equals.”

FFL mentor Meghan Taylor said it was “fantastic seeing the girls interact with each other and make interfaith inperson friendships post-Covid. Their happiness was infectious and I was very proud to be a part of this initiative.”