Peter Riddell has worked with Initiatives of Change (IofC UK) organising trust-building programmes between people of different faiths based on shared ethical values, in particular with people who have suffered due to Britain’s colonial legacy.
He is Convenor of IofC UK’s 'Agenda for Reconciliation' (AfR) programme for refugees who wish to contribute to rebuilding their country of origin. Through this, he became a trustee and secretary of Somali Initiative for Dialogue and Democracy founded in 2006 by leaders of the Somali diaspora, whose story is told in ‘Ten Years of Somali Peace-making in Diaspora’. It set the course for the future development of AfR, supporting peacemakers from other diaspora communities.
Peter has had a long association with the annual conferences at IofC’s international centre in Caux, Switzerland. He was coordinator of their 'Agenda for Reconciliation' conferences between 1994 and 2003. Since 2009, he has coordinated the 'Learning to be a Peacemaker' course on Islamic approaches to peacemaking for young Muslims and their non-Muslim peers, which has been delivered at Caux conferences by broadcaster and Imam Ajmal Masroor.
Peter currently facilitates a monthly online course on 'Qualities and Strategies of Peacemakers', drawing lessons on peacemaking from documentary films. He has also been a founder member and secretary of two other organizations, the Balfour Project and British-Arab Exchanges (no longer in existence).
