Summer 2007

During the summer of 2006, 60 youth gathered together in Toronto, Ontario, for two weeks of intensive training and practice to learning about engaging and working with junior youth in the context of the neighbourhood. Six months later, these youth, joined by their friends, have worked to establish about a dozen junior youth groups reaching nearly 100 junior youth. A tremendous amount has been learned about establishing and sustaining junior youth groups and about helping junior youth to develop their capacities for teaching and service. Communities everywhere have considered afresh the possibilities open to them to bring Bahá’í and Bahá’í-inspired education to junior youth and children.

In some of these neighbourhoods we have also seen the powerful effect of the interaction among the core activities, as each reinforces each other in a “dynamic coherence.” In one neighbourhood, a junior youth group established during Pebbles to Pearls quickly gave rise to a children’s class, then another and another, all being taught by junior youth from the neighbourhood under the guidance of a children’s class teacher; a devotional gathering, a study circle, and a mother’s group for parents. All of these children, junior youth, mothers, fathers and members of the community are engaged in spiritual conversation, in training and service. The community of interest has grown from none to over 50 individuals in a period of six months. Such examples demonstrate the powerful effect of the interaction of core activities, creating a “dynamic coherence” in a neighbourhood.

Fire and Snow seeks to build on the achievements made during Pebbles to Pearls, again combining training and practice, but now aimed at learning about establishing a dynamic coherence among the core activities. centered on Books 3, 5 and 6, with emphasis on Book Six, as we learn how to establish teams and prepare them to engage a community with the view of propelling a process of individual and social transformation.