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Summer service project offers spiritual solutions. Photo by Harry Ortgies Relationships planted the seeds for Baha’i core activities at a homeless shelter on Long Island, New York. Relationships helped them sprout, too. And service by the youths of a Baha’i summer project helped nurture them to full flower. It all started when April Lowry was [...]
There’s been something new learned — and something new to try the next time — with every children’s class session offered by Baha’is in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Fairfax County East, Virginia, in the NoVA East cluster. The results haven’t been spectacular, but slow and steady is how you build a sustainable core activity. [...]
Need, meet opportunity. Photo Gallery An intensive Book 3 coincides with children’s camp in Oregon. Photo courtesy of Marcia Veach Click to enlarge and browse a gallery of related photos. Participants in a Portland, Oregon-area intensive study of Book 3 (Teaching Children’s Classes: Grade 1) of the Ruhi Institute training sequence found an ideal venue [...]
It’s a good cluster reflection gathering when attendees are able to discover the reality of a situation, identify solutions and resources, and agree on a plan of action. That’s what Baha’is in the New Hampshire cluster of Baha’i communities did when they consulted about the needs of junior youths in the city of Manchester. Discussion [...]
By Christina Wright You may often think to yourself, “That happens to other people’s kids, but not mine.” But bullying isn’t just something that happens to some kids you don’t know in some small corner pocket of where you live. Bullying is happening to 60 to 80 percent of our children all over the country [...]
Devotional gathering is bringing moms together in Lincoln, Nebraska. Photo courtesy of Katie Bodie Cervantes They’ve served actively. Now they’re married and diving into the “baby business.” How can young adult Baha’is find avenues of service that fit around parenthood? Billie Kay Bodie of Burchard, Nebraska, raised these concerns in consultation at the recent 104th [...]
The Dalton, Georgia, Baha’i community once was much larger and quite active in the greater society. The director of a new community center in the recession-devastated “Carpet Capital of the World” remembers. When Baha’is recently took a barrel of donated canned food items to the center, he spoke of attending events they had sponsored. Would [...]
Make friends. Build trust. Learn people’s needs. Be flexible. These are critical to the success of any social and economic development project, say three longtime practitioners who participated in the Baha’i Conference on Social and Economic Development. And just might aid the rest of us when opportunities for social action arise naturally from our neighborhood [...]
Betty Chong-Gerbracht of Bothell, Washington, Bahá’í children’s class coordinator for her cluster of local communities, shares how a thriving children’s class in an apartment complex began and what she has learned from the experience. After months of [visiting] parents and children [and inviting them] to start children’s classes in their homes, and a couple of [...]
This time it was different. This time a mother in the neighborhood reached out to other moms in her Vienna, Virginia, neighborhood. That’s how a Baha’i children’s class with seven children formed this fall in a Vienna apartment complex and has thrived. Visits to the neighborhood by Baha’is from Vienna and other Fairfax County towns [...]
“Apartments. Kids. Children’s classes!” That was the progression of Elyce Nasseri’s thoughts as the Missouri City, Texas, Baha’i retrieved her beagle from the people who had found Jasmine-dog wandering. The complex was one where the Baha’is had wished to make friends. Management had not allowed them to visit door to door, but now a golden [...]
In InCultureParent, a Magazine For Parents Raising Little Global Citizens, Sandra Lynn Hutchison writes about the Baha’i perspective of death and notes effective ways of discussing this issue with children. Read the full story
A process of community building is playing out in the first year of a new planning and action cycle
Teachers seize opportunity to put additional lessons to use
Veteran teacher has expanded vision of civilization building after year of serving in the wider community
Georgia family falls in love with adopted homeland of Ethiopia
Concern for well-being of the children was allayed when family settled in Ethiopia and saw that a support system was already in place
10-year-old’s drive to aid Iran’s Baha’is is rewarded
When Leah Roberts told her 10-year-old son, Jackson, that she was writing to Florida’s U.S. senators to urge that they co-sponsor S Res. 80 in support of persecuted Baha’is in Iran, he decided to do something of his own. He drafted a petition and looked for people to sign it. At a May 14 outdoor [...]
Journal article spotlights Baha’i writings on breastfeeding
Who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to write an article for a widely circulated medical journal? Especially when you’re a Baha’i and the article would place the Baha’i writings in many people’s hands for the first time. Haig Setrakian would, certainly. The Indianapolis, Indiana, resident physician in emergency medicine and pediatrics was sharing with a [...]
Lessons in Faith, Family and Encouragement
Gil Tyree, from Georgia Public Broadcasting, interviews the Hutcherson Family from Decatur, Ga. – Nwandi, Vincent and daughters Aziza and Zarina – and invites them to share reflections on the value of Baha’i children’s classes.
Young Baha’is blaze path of service to humanity
Projects enlist others in helping those in need and communities as a whole
Words of wisdom, from one mom to another
In honor of Mothers Day, Heidi Stevens compiles in this Chicago Tribune editorial some memorable advice that’s been received from Moms. A motto my mom lives by: “When there is love, nothing is too much trouble and there is always time” (from the Baha’i writings). — Homa Sabet Tavangar, author of “Growing Up Global: Raising [...]
Ethiopian ‘Sesame Street’ teaches life-saving lessons
Bruktawit Tigabu, the 2001 winner of the Rolex Awards for Enterprise, Young Laureates Programme and member of the Baha’i Faith, is featured in CNN International’s African Voices for her co-creation of Ethiopian children’s TV show “Tsehai Loves Learning.”
By Susanne Alexander “Our children need to be nurtured spiritually and to be integrated into the life of the Cause.” — Universal House of Justice, Ridván 2000 Gradually the power of integrating participants of all ages is emerging on Sundays in Lakewood, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. “From the beginning, the children were included in [...]
Young. Old. Immigrant. Of another faith. It takes all kinds of people, participating in all kinds of ways, to build community. What paths of service are people finding? What is being learned about how to facilitate that participation? Friends in communities or clusters of communities nationwide share their experiences in this series of reports: Finding [...]
Relationships with — and among — families Connection with families has been the guiding principle in the formation of study circles for youths in a San Diego, California, neighborhood. One circle, on Sunday mornings, is timed to coincide with a children’s class — since four families are connected with both activities — and facilitate service [...]
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