The 2011 Annual Friendship Dinner & Awards Ceremony of the Institute of Interfaith Dialog, Oklahoma City took place on Tuesday November 15, 2011. The event was held in Petroleum Club, Oklahoma City.

The dinner gathered about two hundred and fifty people most of whom were academicians, State Representatives, businessmen and volunteers of nonprofit organizations. Mrs. Nurcihan Uysal, the outreach director of the Institute of Interfaith Dialog made a welcome speech and delivered a presentation of the Interfaith Garden, a new project of the IID. And the program started with the invocation which was done by Bruce Prescott, Executive Director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists.

Kelly Burley, the Executive director of KOSU, was MC of the event. And the keynote speaker was Dick Pryor, the Deputy Director and Managing Editor for OETA-The Oklahoma Network.  Dick Pryor delivered his keynote address on “The role of free and responsible media toward a society of mutual respect.”

In his speech, Dick Pryor stressed the significant roles of media as a means of information, leadership and entertainment. He said that media broadcasts need to be the voice of moderate people, not of intolerant zealots, and there should be programs that unite people and foster mutual understanding. He also said “the more we understand (each other), the more understanding we will be.”

Dick Pryor thanked the Institute of Interfaith Dialog for organizing events that bring people together regardless of their religious, political, ethnical differences.

After the keynote speech, the MC of the event Kelly Burley called the honorees. Oklahoma Chief of Police Bill Citty was awarded with Service Award, Edmond Public Schools Superintendent Dr. David Goin received the Education Award, and Vincent Orza, the President and CEO, and KSB152 was given the Media Award.

The event ended up with the brief speech and prayer of peace told by Orhan Kucukosman, the Executive Director of the Institute of Interfaith Dialog, Oklahoma City.