The Five Year Plan 2011-2016 (Summary)/Introduction
Introduction[edit]
In recent years, the Bahá’í world has experienced the emergence of a culture that "promotes a way of thinking, studying, and acting, in which all consider themselves as treading a common path of service"." This culture has profoundly influenced the activities and development of individuals, communities, and institutions, fostering a deeper spirit of collaboration among the three protagonists of the current series of global Plans. As this Five Year Plan came to a close, the Universal House of Justice noted in its message dated 29 December 2015 that the "considerable distance already travelled" along the path "is evident from the ... Plan's most striking outcomes"-among them, the achievement of more than 5,000 programmes of growth worldwide. Further, the cumulative number of individuals who had completed at least the first book in the sequence of institute courses reached half a million; in several clusters, over a thousand inhabitants sometimes several thousand- engaged in a well-established pattern of activity; and a generation of youth was galvanized into action.
During this third Five Year Plan of the Fifth Epoch of the Formative Age of the Faith, the Bahá’í community witnessed in diverse settings around the world the multiplication of clusters with a programme of growth. Vital to realizing this accomplishment were the friends serving as pioneers on the homefront, who helped to initiate a process of capacity building among the local inhabitants in scores of clusters. More than 5,000 believers arose to diffuse the light of Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation as homefront pioneers, surpassing the number of international pioneers within a single plan for the first time. Support for the burgeoning activities in emerging clusters also came from the friends in neighbouring clusters that acted as reservoirs of human resources and experience.
Efforts to strengthen the process of growth across hundreds of clusters moving past the second milestone and beyond were reinforced as learning was shared and applied at an accelerated pace. Some communities began to learn for the first time how to intensify their activity; others, which had previously achieved intensity but had witnessed setbacks, needed to be reinvigorated or further strengthened. As clusters advanced along a continuum, certain essential elements of the framework for action became noticeably enhanced in each: engaging the local population in meaningful conversations, sustaining a flow of individuals through the sequence of courses and assisting them to enter the arena of service, systematizing gatherings for reflection, and maintaining a rhythm of teaching within three-month cycles of activity. The institutions and agencies in these clusters became more adept at managing the complexities at this advanced stage of development, and a growing number of Bahá’ís and friends from the wider society participated in core activities, some focusing their attention on particular neighbourhoods and villages.
By Ridván 2016, around 200 clusters had developed the capacity to work with large numbers, with some of them having more than 500 core activities. It was in these places that "the interlocking dimensions of community life" greatly advanced and "the society-building power inherent in the Faith became most visible. As the number of activities and participants continued to rise, schemes of coordination became increasingly complex in order to support the growing needs of these communities.
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The Five Year Plan 2011-2016: Summary of Achievements and Learning[edit]
The contribution made by young people worldwide to the achievements of this Plan was a continuation of the services Bahá’í youth had rendered for decades. The special focus given to this generation around the midpoint of the Plan, with the convocation of an "unprecedented series of 114 conferences spanning the globe", further spurred into action thousands of youth inspired by the vision of Bahá’u’lláh. In the final two years of the Plan, great strides were made in learning how to channel the energies of young people to serve their communities. This receptive population moved to the vanguard of the work of expansion and consolidation, setting the pace in clusters around the world. The House of Justice noted in 2015: "The marvellous exploits of the youth in the field of service are one of the finest fruits of the present Plan."
Central among the elements that ensured the victorious conclusion of this Plan was the rise in institutional capacity at the local, regional, and national levels. The role of institutions and agencies in helping to advance the movement of clusters became clearer as they strengthened their ability to foster individual initiative and a dynamic community life. They refined their capacity to read the reality of their communities with greater degrees of acuity, to adopt a posture of learning, to gather and share experiences and insights from the field, and to put in place systems to respond to the demands of growth.
Hand in hand with the growth in thousands of clusters, steady progress was made in places where Houses of Worship were to be erected. Most notable was the construction in Santiago, Chile, of the last Continental House of Worship, which was nearly complete by the end of the Plan. Still in their early stages were the projects in the communities where, as the Universal House of Justice announced in 2012, two national and five local Houses of Worship were to be built, places where the union of worship and service had found coherent expression through the growing activities of the community. The friends in these countries and clusters began labouring steadily to increase consciousness among the local population of the significance of raising up such an edifice in their midst. As in the past, believers worldwide offered sacrificial contributions for the construction of these seven Houses of Worship.
As initiatives for the spiritual education of all members of the community became further rooted in certain clusters, so too did the awareness of the imperative to address the well-being of society at large through a range of social and economic development activities. "A natural outcome of the rise both in resources and in consciousness of the implications of the Revelation for the life of a population", the House of Justice noted, "is the stirrings of social action." In the five years under review, over 10,000 efforts were undertaken annually in the area of social action, generally addressing through the application of spiritual principles specific challenges facing a population. More than 100 Bahá’í-inspired development organizations now have the capacity to engage in relatively complex areas of activity and foster ties with agencies of government and civil society. The sizeable growth in the scale of development activity at all levels of complexity reflects the increased capabilities of the Bahá’í community that in large part have arisen from executing the global Plans. The endeavours to contribute in diverse ways to the spiritual, intellectual, social, cultural, and economic development of humanity also enhanced capacity for participation in the discourses of society. Concurrent with this advance was a notable development in the relationships of the Bahá’í community with prominent groups and figures of authority,
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Introduction[edit]
providing opportunities to acquaint them with the teachings and principles of the Faith. Such interactions at times attracted media coverage on a range of Bahá’í-related topics and events.
In this period, major developments at the Bahá’í World Centre included: the Eleventh Bahá’í International Convention, which brought together more than 1,000 delegates representing 157 National Spiritual Assemblies; an increase in the number of national communities participating in the group pilgrimage programme; a continuous stream of visitors to the Bahá’í gardens; and steps taken on many fronts to further protect, restore, and preserve the Holy Places for future generations.
The expanded capacity that the friends acquired in the field of service, and the efforts exerted by every institution and community to advance wide areas of endeavour, bore significant fruit. Leading up to the close of the Five Year Plan, the Bahá’í world was well positioned to usher in the next stage in the unfoldment of the Divine Plan. "From the heights to which the community of the Greatest Name has attained", the House of Justice observed, "bright prospects are visible on the horizon."7