IF20, ACWAY, Cape Town, August 10, 2025
Introductory comments by Katherine Marshall, G20 Interfaith Forum Vice President, at the opening meeting of the G20 Youth Interfaith Forum the day before IF20 South Africa commenced meetings. Attendees of the YIF20 included over 50 youth delegates from 25 nationalities and 15 religious affiliations, who also attended and participated in official IF20 meetings later in the week.
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Good morning! My role is to welcome you and to link what you will do today to the G20 Interfaith Forum over the next few days, where you are important participants. I stand here because Cole Durham, the president and leader of the G20 Interfaith Forum, could not travel because of illness. He sends his best wishes and welcome.
The banners and posters that you see all around us reflect the core themes of the Forum (we term it IF20). We are embarking on an event marking the 11th year of G20 Interfaith Forum, with South Africa as the 2025 President, which infuses its spirit. We are delighted that this ACWAY meeting could take place now, and that you are bringing your heads, your hands, your hearts, and your souls, to contribute to the entire event.
To give you a bit of a sense of the IF20 (you will hear far more tomorrow), we need to start with the question: Why the G20? In some senses, the G20 can be considered the most powerful of the global governance institutions in today’s world. And our ideal, our purpose, as the G20 Interfaith Forum, is to bring the best of religion into the G20 process. Our idea of what is, where to find, that best of religion, is in the common, shared concern for the people who are most vulnerable, across the world. We see that concern, that care and compassion, as the strongest common asset that brings all of us, representing many religious and faith traditions, together.
My own role in this Forum has been to work, with many colleagues, on defining and elaborating the issues we are taking to the G20 leaders and to their Summit. One way to put it is to imagine that I am your fairy godmother, and she asks, if the G20 Summit does something useful, what will it be? What are the ideas, the actions that we’re hoping to see as an outcome? So that very ambitious challenge is what brings us here. We thus need to recognize and keep in mind our very serious purpose.
And we cannot forget, alongside generating enthusiasm, energy, and a positive spirit, that we face an extraordinarily difficult time in history, where many societies are deeply troubled and conflicted. We talk a lot about hope, and we are all of us, young and old, individually and collectively, looking for the kinds of solutions that represent the best that interfaith communities can offer. In that spirit, that’s obviously the purpose that brings all of us together, no mean or easy challenge!
So we are deeply appreciative to all of you for coming and participating. It is a bit of a miracle that this meeting has been put together in what probably is something like record time! Many congratulations go to the ACWAY team and especially to Liliya, and also many thanks to the Stirling Foundation and to the G20 Interfaith Forum, which you will get to know well in the days ahead.
I will end with a bit of a challenge to all of you; I hope you can help me to refine an idea.
In India, a young person came back from a meeting and was asked what happened. He answered: NATO. On probing, it turned out that he meant “No Action, Talk Only”. So we’re looking for an alternative, as our purpose is about far more than dialogue and talk. We are looking above all to action, what we can do but also what the broader national and global communities can and must do. So I was looking this morning for an acronym that we could use to convey that spirit, and I’m testing two here.
One is GRACE. The idea is that we move forward boldly with grace, endeavor, and creative vision to fulfil our goals. The specific letters that make up GRACE are: Go (initiative), Resolutely (courage), Acting (delivery), Creatively (creative energy), with Endeavor (pursuing with persistence).
Another possibility is BRAVE: Build (initiative), Results (delivery), Action (pursue), Vision (creative), and Endurance (Courage). Thus BRAVE epitomizes the sense that we need to create boldly, pursue persistently, and deliver.
You and we can undoubtedly come up with better ideas, but the main point is that we want to move away from a NATO trap, towards an ideal that involves courageous, determined, and practical action, in the spirit of bringing about the kinds of change that we’re looking for, with a spirit of grace and commitment to those who are vulnerable, hearing their voices, and helping to create lasting change.
So, courage to all of you. I’m hoping to get to know all of you over the course of these days. And thank you so much for being here.
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Katherine Marshall is a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University. She serves as the vice president of the G20 Interfaith Association and executive director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue. With over three decades of experience at the World Bank, Marshall has been at the forefront of addressing development issues in the world’s poorest countries, with a particular focus on the intersection of religion and global development.