Transcript of: Speaking on coherence and community building, part 1
Garth Pollack
2011
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Dear friends. Isn't it wonderful to be able to say dear friends and mean it and be speaking to people you haven't really met yet? Is that amazing thing truly? It's quite humbling to be here before you to speak about the guidance of your sauce of justice. We got him social action, this vast revelation touching upon every aspect of human existence. Collins for profound change. But what is the nature of that change? It is clear that the world civilization that's emerging must achieve what the House of Justin calls the divine coherence between the material and spiritual aspects of life requirements of life. And this is so central to our teachings. But I'm speaking just before coming up here, it was. Interesting thing is that while this revelation with all its principles, its teachings on the experience we've acquired, it often gives us the impression that we know how to do all these things, because we can talk about those principles. And what we really must understand is that we're really, in the beginning of learning about how to apply these teachings in the community and learn about social action on how to apply these principles. Um, it's interesting that we can as we look at the world, we can think that much of humanity is unconsciously involved in this process and that through our actions at the level of community, there will come more and more involved and more and more consciously engaged in this process. But it's interesting to note that throughout the world, um, I would say hundreds of thousands of people from many disciplines as individuals, as parts of organizations, governments and even businesses spending billions of dollars are all seeking to help humanity in its development through the provision of service is building of infrastructure educate sessional systems direct action. The list is really quite longer the efforts that are being carried out on behalf of humanity, but what's most striking? But what really what is most striking about these efforts is the focus on the material side of development and really the stark absence of a focus on the spiritual or an understanding of the coherence of these two elements of the material on dhe spiritual on the requirements of life and, on the other hand, this vast revelation destined to influence humanity over the next 500,000 years, the spiritual forces that has brought its teachings, its institutions, its believers all placing this this coherence at the center of all its endeavors. This dynamic coherence between the spiritual materialists found integrated throughout our writings. And here are a few examples that we may be very familiar with. From Baha'i Ola. All men have been created to carry forward and ever advancing civilization and yet is not the object of every relation to effect a transformation in the whole character of mankind, a transformation that shall manifest itself both outwardly and inwardly, that you affect both its inner life and its external conditions from Abdu'l-Baha and secret divine civilization. God has given us eyes that we may look about us at the world and lay hold of whatsoever were for their civilization and the arts of living. He has given us ears that we may hear in profit by the wisdom of scholars and philosophers and arise to promote and practice it. Senses and faculties have been bestowed upon us to be devoted to the service of the general good so that we distinguished above all other forms of life for perceptiveness and reason should labor at all times and along all lines, whether the occasion be great or small, ordinary or extraordinary until all mankind are safely gathered into the impregnable stronghold of knowledge. And again, we must now highly resolve to arise and lay hold off all those instrumentalities that promote the peace and well being and happiness the knowledge, culture, industry, the dignity, value and station of the entire human race. Thus, through the restoring waters of pure intention, an unselfish effort, the earth of human potentialities, will blossom with its own latent excellence and flour into praiseworthy qualities and bear and flourish until it comes to rival that Rose Garden of Knowledge which belonged to our forefathers. So we can see in just these few references, and there are so many more that this idea of our effort to seek the wellbeing the prosperity of humankind is part and parcel with Baha'i community is about, and I wanted to say something about, um, this particular book, the Secret Divine Civilization. It's one of the hidden gems it's not often referred to, and, um, it's a wonderful book and you may know Advil. How wrote it anonymously, I believe, in the 18 eighties, and it was directed to the Persian people to help them progress. In this book, Akka Baha'i provides insights into the nature of the principles, the goals, the needs and the processes of building a divine civilization, which is the larger outcome of our social action. But what he discusses most are the qualities which the individuals who wish to undertake social action must develop and manifest. He links the spiritual moral quality of individuals inseparably to the success of social action in the world. Thus, study of this book is highly recommended now from showed Effendi, there's two references I'd like to share about the organic and gradual nature of the process, which has as its core the oneness of humankind, the principle of the oneness of mankind. The pivot around which all the teachings of the hollow revolved is no mere outburst of emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hopes. Its appeal is not to be merely identified with a reawakening of the spirit of brotherhood and goodwill among men. Nor does it aimed solely at the fostering of harmonious cooperation among individual peoples and nations. Its implications are deeper. It's claims greater than any which the profits of old were allowed to advance. It implies organic change in the structure of present day society, a change such as the world has not yet experienced. It calls for no less than the reconstruction and demilitarization of the whole civilized world world, organically unified in all its essential aspects of its life, its political machinery. It's spiritual aspiration. It's trading finances, its spirit, its script and language, and yet infinite in the diversity of the national characteristics of its federated units. And again, the problems which confront the believers at the present time, whether social, spiritual, economic or administrative will gradually be solved. As the number and the resource is of friends multiply and their capacity for service and for the application of the high principles develops, they should be patient, confident and active in utilizing every possible opportunity that presents itself within the limits now necessarily imposed upon them. May the Almighty ate them to fulfill their highest hopes. No, actually, we can see that even within these few quotes, we can see all the guidance emerging from the House of Justice for this current period. But before we come to some of the guidance, it would be useful to see the role of this guidance and its source, Baha'i revelation is fast revelation as it manifests itself stage by stage before humanity might be considered in terms of organic growth, like the growth of the tree. When we look at a seed and we compare it to a tree, it's amazing. And if if you hadn't known the connection between a seed and you couldn't imagine how something so small would be able to produce something so large, so useful, yet within the seed, this almost insignificant thing and although we can't see it, is the late and complex pattern for its growth waiting to grow. And when the seed is planted for some time, there's nothing to see processes air invisible, but eventually a single sprout emerges, and if you looked at it, you might not distinguish it from a blade of grass. As more time passes, the plant continues to grow almost imperceptibly and the original sprout becomes sticker and offshoots appear overtime. The plant continues to grow in size and complexity patterns emerge and repeat themselves, and from the very small, apparently simple seed and sprout emerges and immense tree providing fruits and shelter. This revelation has been planted by God and is destined to bring forth amazing fruits, the oneness of humanity, a new world order, world peace, the development of the potential of every human being. And as it grows, it will become a shelter for all mankind. This analogy of a tree, it actually helps us think of the faith in many of its aspects. The Guardian talks about how the faith will go through a period of obscurity and then begin to appear on the stage. And as it grows, many things will happen and we won't get into all of those. But what's interesting about about the seed is that the patter for its growth already exists. It needs time, and the right conditions, in order, manifest the pattern of its growth. And, for example, if we plan a tomato up tomato seed, we know what to expect. The plant will grow in a certain way, kind of like a vying and different stages. We have to do certain things. Maybe we'd water stake it up, protected from pests and the guard who would know how to respect the pattern that emerges and not try to make the tomato plant grew like a corn plant or expect that that to be the fruit. And so a wise garden Gardner recognizes. What are the patterns of growth in the different plants? But what will this world civilization look like? Have we ever grown a New World Order before? What will it look like? But what will the structures that emerge look like? Can we can we decide that in advance? Well, sometimes gardeners are given plants and given a seat, and they go in plant. They don't know what to expect that because of their experience, they wait and see what begins to emerge and as it emerges, then see what's needed to take it to the next stage. And it's our privilege, as members of the high community and those that engage in the community building process with us to be those loving, humble gardeners attending this plant. This whatever stage it is right now to nurture it into what it will become to provide the fruits that humanity is craved and needed for centuries and will come to shelter all humanity. What a privilege. We have to be part of this process, and it's really the House of Justice that enables us to become those gardeners that, as we as we take forward, are learning about building community. And as we build community of entry into social action and take it to larger stages and wider, wider application, the House of Justice guides us. It perceives this again this this tree of revelation that will emerge. The guy's just at each stage toe what the principles that will help us nurture this. This this plant. Another important aspect of guidance is how we use it. We studied the guidance of the sauce of justice, and it provides a framework for learning in action. And initially we studied the guidance. We consult, we make plans, we carry them into action. And then we reflect upon them. We generate that experience and reflect upon it and then begin that cycle again. What's interesting is the House of Justice assets to use the teachings and the guidance as a light illuminates our experience. And I think that's a very, very powerful analogy metaphor. And it has a very real application in the world. When my eyesight first began to weekend and I found I needed reading glasses, often on not for all situations I would often because they didn't wear them all the time. I would put them down and go off to a meeting and or go to the office and realized I hadn't brought my glasses with me. And if I had work to do this is when I was in Zambia. Onda had some reading to do and I wasn't able to read in my office. I would take what I was doing outside into the sunlight and there I could read the sunlight with a bloomin what I was trying to read and understand. And really, that's the role of the guidance as well, not just to help set up the framework and initially guide us. But as we consult, that's we study, consult, plan, carry out actions. When we begin that reflection process and examine our experience in order to make the adjustments that learning has brought to us, we shine the light of the guidance on our experience, and it illuminates those facets and again, any time any of us with weakening eyesight have had to work on something rather intricate. Without that light shining upon the work, we won't be able to carry it out and so this is really a very dynamic process. We have an involvement with the guidance. It's now almost 30 years since Universal House of Justice wrote the Baha'i community in its October 20th 1983 message, calling for the community to begin more consistent, consciously learning about social and economic development. And it's fascinating to see that the principles and guidance identified and shared in that message are still the foundation of the guidance of the Grand plan, albeit as we begun carrying out consciously learning this, this guy instead become richer and older. Now, over the next two days, we'll have an opportunity after the plenary sessions, to study and reflect on the most recent guidance, which we first to our involvement in the life, society and social action. So we'll not really study the guidance here, but explore some of the principles some of this guidance that we need to shine on our experience shine on our actions, and I want to also say and also echo What can it scared last night is that these presentations aren't really meant to answer questions per se. They actually will enlarge our questions, maybe in a more specific way and identify our path of learning that we need to undertake One of the goals that we hope we will all take from this is that, um, this message, this framework for social action that the House of Justice is providing for us really allows each and every one of us to become engaged as much or as little as we want in a very dynamic learning process. Again, we're only really beginning to learn about social action. We have these wonderful principles that sometimes give us the sense that we already know. But really, as the House of Justice is asked us to engage further in the life of society, were just beginning that process another. I want to echo another thing from last night, and that is you know we have. We have some. We have dichotomies in the faith. And while we've been focusing a lot on the false dichotomies, they're also really legitimate dichotomies. And one of one of this is sometimes there's that the principles we have in some ways are very simple and complex at the same time that the actions that can help us learn about this complexity can be very simple. In nature, but that complexity, that complexity and fools as we go forward and experience and, you know, today in the world one of them situations, the world is that we haven't be. We haven't talking very generally here. We haven't been the agents of learning so much, um, more and more the world has come to rely upon experts, and so the experts maybe go out and gain experience and share with us what they've learned as an expert. And then, um, often times it's felt that Excuse me. Oftentimes it's felt that it's way beyond us. It's very complex. You have to be an expert to be able to work in these areas, to learn anything, spend years studying and, well that study and years of experience useful. The interesting thing about the faith is that it's really it's cool is to be making available to every single soul and to invite their participation to make universal plantation universal participation, not a vague kind of goal that will happen sometime but begin to learn how to do it every day as we move forward. And so we need to develop a comfort riel comfort with this process that were involved in Thank you so much. Excuse me for a second and it's a It's a comfort with the complexity of these processes. And I want to say one thing here. Not complicated. This which is different than complexity, this wonderful complexity, this realization that this process is a profound and have myriads of connections to every aspect of our life. It isn't a simple in your process. So as we can gain comfort with that complexity, we can also get comfort to say that way, don't know everything about this. We're only beginning to learn and invite others to learn with us. Um, and actually that that becoming comfortable with the complexity and the ability to also be comfortable without knowing all the answers really goes hand in hand. It's really, um, it's very difficult to think you have to have all the answer to look at that complexity and think we have to have all the answers now before we can take any steps and you'll see that in the guidance, the House of Justice, they'll show us how we make this beginning on grow this complexity rather than deal with it from the beginning to help us with this is the over what we need. The overwhelming conviction that through the that the faith through the covenant, we'll be able good and through study of the teachings and through action on reflection in the light of the guidance will be able to learn and defuse this dynamic coherence until all humanity is indeed sheltered. Are we comfortable with not knowing, really, are we? Can we gain that comfortable this? Can we let go of having to be experts and really enjoy this process? I think that's so crucial. Well, I hope so. I hope that's the case. I hope that we can really learn to be absolutely comfortable embrace this process because it's really the process we're gonna be involved in for quite some time now. Many of this is have been involved in social action over the years throughout the world over many years, at many different levels, directly and indirectly with communities and local organizations, through programs and different sectors such as agriculture, education, business, governance and so many more, and working for nonprofit organizations, governments and even businesses. And many of us have tried, with varying degrees of success, to infuse the organization's the programs and processes with the Baha'i principles and teachings. And what we've learned can be immensely useful to the learning process that Baha'i community is engaged in right now. And House of Justice indicates that the friends working in the grass roots in the community, in community after community, we'll be able to draw to the extent necessary and desirable on this experience and the capacity as they strive to address the concerns of the society around them. No, What is striking is the emphasis that the current guidance gives us that the learning about social action and our initial efforts to become involved in life society will be in thousands and thousands of Baha'i communities and that the social action emerges naturally as by communities, capacity to grow and maintain its vitality is gradually raised. It's not something that we do separately or parallel to becoming a Baha'i community and learning about growth. We're going to explore this more fully in the session on coherence. But briefly, as the community grows in a neighborhood or a village or in a social space, with growth being understood as the raising of the capacity of those in that neighborhood, social space our village to join us in the community building process, which is initially expressed through the capacities developed in the astute process to carry out the core activities. You know, it's interesting to think about that, you know, 10 years ago. Um, I'm sure many of you were around when we talked about clusters. Remember that clusters Seems like it's been with us for a very long time already. But what what a strange idea was originally and how difficult it was to figure out what would this be? But over those actually, relatively short time we've become very comfortable with thinking. And the reason for the House of Justice to take us to that was to be able to have manageable geographic areas with which in to learn about growth. And over the last two plans, we've come to learn that, actually, while we're looking at the growth within a cluster, the growth doesn't really take place throughout the cluster. It takes place in these neighborhoods in social spaces, and so this is really where our experience in social action will take place as well. When you think about where else would it begins right in that neighborhood and The interesting thing for us is that G Where would I find a neighborhood? And you open your friend. Oh, it's right there. We all have access to this. If you like this laboratory, this space for learning about serving humanity and enabling others to serve humanity. So thinking about this, that where we'll be learning about social action is the community and the house. I just says as our community learns to grow to expand, consolidate, we would then be able to begin and end. See, yeah, um, one of the conditions of that is that through this process of growth and consolidation, we begin to have abundant resource is in any particular neighborhood and that that that abundance of resource is within, allow us to and actually require of us to begin exploring social action. If if we didn't have this component of social action emerging out of our growth, if we go back to the analogy of a tree, it would be like planting a seed and contemplating that growth of that plant would be the seed getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and again, that is one component growth of growing in size. But it's coupled with transformation. And if we were just thinking, the community will grow and we'll have more core activities and market news and just keep growing. We won't enter into that transfer to that next degree of transformation. So it's absolutely imperative that as we gain the experience, the confidence to grow our community, to involve others in these processes and to create an abundance of resource, is we would then engage in social action. Now the interesting thing is, I'm sure we're all thinking maybe about our own neighborhood or about some of the neighborhoods in arm close, sir. Or maybe if we've served in different parts of the world thinking about some of the communities that we worked in there, but we almost have to think about how would this learning go on? We have. Right now, 1600 clusters are over 1000 6 100 clusters that have already begun learning about growth and are well in the path to be able to systematized that and have regular growth and reached that point of having abundant resource is in the cluster. So imagine how many thousands of friends how many thousands of communities within these clusters will begin to explore this learning. So how would that begin? How would we begin with thousands of friends once we have his abundance to learn about, um, about social action? And here's one of the, uh, so our first date is that the learning that will be doing the arena of our learning and our action will be the community, the neighborhood social spaces, A second concept that the House of Justice wants us to understand. And again, this is sometimes a bit different than what we've come to see is traditional development. And that is, we must see. Social action is a spectrum arranging from informal, simple, possibly one off efforts carried out by individuals and small groups at one end of the spectrum and programs with a high degree of complexity developed by behind spirit Baha'i inspired organizations at the other, Um, and all of these efforts will contribute to our learning. You know, One of things that we need to really grasp is that we're not so much now about carrying out projects of social action. Our job is to learn about social action, and this will eventually allow us to have that capacity to replicate, to share what we're learning and accelerate the process. But it's it's not about carrying out projects. It's about learning about social action and, um, an example of what one of these simple went off efforts could look like, which may have that as its end. And it's wonderful and certain things that we learn from it. This is a personal experience that we had this last winter. Um, my family are We returned from warmer climates to Indiana, and, well, my boys really loved exploring snow this last year. Way didn't so much. I'm really missing the tropics, but we When we first arrived, we lived in a neighborhood, which was amazing neighborhood for us to begin learning about engaging in teaching on social action. But it was during during the snow that Wade begun a children's class in the neighborhood, and we were slowly trying to engage the parents to become involved, and one parent had got involved in helping regularly. But winter hit, and I'd forgotten this about northern climates. People stopped going outdoors. Makes sense when you think about it, but so we didn't We didn't see our neighbors so much so we would still get the kids together. But when the snow started falling well, many of many of the neighbors were single moms, single working moms. They were going to school. They were working. They were trying to keep the family together. And when the snow hits without any predictability, that was called a snow day and school would close. And so these mothers were frantic. Okay, I have to go work. I have to go to school. What do I do with the kids? And at that point way were quite available. And so one of one of the neighbors said, Well, you know, would you just for a few hours, would you be able to watch my kids? I'll try to arrange something. We said alone. That's fine. We'll be very happy. Then we realized this was a service that we could begin. Providing that neighborhood for those days during the winter is in that a simple action. It was one off. It lasted for winter, and we have since moved from that neighborhood. But it was okay. It was a wonderful effort. It was based on community interacting. It was based on a need that was recognized by the community. It was by talking together and seeing what were some of the possibilities. What were the possibility is that the people involved and that action emerged, I guess we could have taken it to the next step and organized it and been able to offer this to different neighborhoods. But we didn't. We didn't go there. So, um yeah. So some of these initial shorts term actions could grow over time. And as they grew, they would require some structure. If successful, this level, they could continue and grow and gradually develop additional structure and organization to serve more neighborhoods and possibly even a micro region. Um, I was involved with my dear brother lawyer Nello. Many of you know, and from previous conferences. We miss him so much. But when I lived in Bolivia, um and this is how many of our efforts can begin. Um, one of the Baha'i eyes who was a schoolteacher had begun working for a teacher's cooperative rural teacher's cooperative, and she shot an opportunity to share the teachings with the teachers during the break when they would come back from the rural schools into the city and she invited a Loy to give some talks. Well, what about whatever you think? Okay. And we didn't want to abuse the opportunity to when they were coming to relax and told that we're gonna be talking about education. So a life that won't How could how could we turn this into something and swing invited a few of us to say, Well, what could we talk about? And we came up with a list of themes we could talk about, and one was the dynamics of leadership in the community. Consultation, um, education in the light with the spiritual foundation. What? We came up with a number of topics and then each one of us develop them. And then we presented this over two days. It was amazing. The response we got from the school teachers, they said We want more of this. This is great. Can when we do this again. No, we never thought that would happen. We thought we're just doing this one. So we wrote down all the things we presented and began regularly during school breaks. Offering these in each time we get a little better would reflect on how could we make it better? How could we involve the schoolteachers? How could we when we were repeating this for their there with the same group? Maybe start out some little projects of learning between one session and the next, and it just grew, Um, it grew and grew over over. Now it's almost 30 years, and it's now a program that the university newer offers and had developed to a project helping region after region of schoolteachers begin to become agents interacted with the communities to be the positive sources off change in the community and now a 12 volume set of materials again, if we had set out one day said, Well, what could we do? Well, I think we should develop a 12 set volume of materials on school, help schoolteachers interact with their communities and take advantage of their presence in these rural communities. We had no idea where those initial actions would take us, and this is really a great example of this organic growth that emerges out of very simple opportunities are very simple actions in response to opportunities that are presented to us. Now, again referring to the knowledge of the tree. Although the initial efforts might be very modest. They would grow organically as the capacity within a population develops. And trying to take social action to higher levels prematurely would be like trying to construct a tree rather than grow it. Oftentimes we visualize what could be the possibilities. And I said, Well, let's go there. And that kind of action it has 22 pit bulls won. We don't grow organization. We don't take advantage of the opportunity of learning as we grow. And the other is, um, we have the possibility of taking that away from the community. When we take it out like that, that's become an organization. No, Um, I remember when first studying the guidance, the House of Justice, the 20th October message. We were quite excited. We were quite excited and desire to figure out how could we participate in this? And our first thought was to form an organization. And so we actually, you know, did that way. We got a lawyer. We came up with statutes, we formed this organization. Then we said, What are we gonna do? It wasn't clear it all what we would end up doing so again. This is what happens when we when we tried to jump the organic growth process and tried to become an organization, and we won't know what to do now that is one was 11 of our passive learning, and I'm sure many of us may have engaged in that. And some of these organizations, once they reform, they went back and began that learning process on, then made wonderful contributions. But again, as we're thinking, not about just a few individuals engaging in this process but the thousands of clusters and the thousands and the thousands Maur communities in these clusters in the thousands and thousands of friends engaging in social action. We will start with this very gradual, starting with very simple actions and then building upon that, just as we have with all the other efforts we have and learning about growth. Now this, this understanding of growth it provides, and following this process of natural growth, it allows us to learn what are the different stages of growth of of a program, the program we're learning about and the kinds of organization we would need to be again. A tree doesn't just grow. It sometimes grows in this direction a bit more and then eventually the other branches come out. It balances out, but by allowing the actions and our learning in the capacity of the friends growing to define how organization will grow helps us to see even how there might be some natural limits to that organization. Um, example of this is one of things that we were involved in Zambia, and I want to emphasize this any any of these examples that I might share. They aren't meant to be best practices or how to do it. Really, It's about just one experience. It's beginning to learn about some of these principles, but we began a process of working with local communities with friends and neighborhoods, and I won't talk about the whole process. But as as we grew over the years, as as the actions grew hopefully organically, I'm sure we had our spate of thinking. Wouldn't it be better if we jump this? But we learned to rely on this process of organic growth. We ended up having to experiences on. One was in an urban center of working with youth and building what's called promoters of social action and in a rural community and where we were living in the community we were living in was that was this urban community very poor but urban community. And the other area we were working in was, um, 800 kilometers away. You know, if you know the roads in Zambia, it's 800 kilometers, or I guess that's about 500 miles or so. It was It was it felt like much more than 500 miles. But what was interesting is that while we started off with a similar program and approach in both areas, from what we were learning in one, we quickly began to see that how it would evolve in the rural area was very different than how it was evolving in the urban area. That was wonderful, but it introduced that that greater degree of complexity and after after two years off of this learning, we realized that instead of trying to have one organization serving these two efforts, it would be much better to allow each effort to grow independently. So rather than becoming a larger and larger organization, we became two organizations, one based completely on the surreal area, with all the friends that emerged out of the Baha'i community serving that process and an urban experience. So if we had thought in a traditionally the ideas to keep growing and growing, growing and then moved to another region in another region and, well, we found that wasn't the path of growth. And I think again growing organically allows you not not to see the outcome ahead of what you're learning is this. This this organic approach to growth also helps us and helps us to understand other principles on day. One of them is that social change is not a project that one group of people carries out for the benefit of others. Now again, that tends to be how we I have looked at that there's a group of people engaged in and action and doing things for others. Um, also our all right are learning our efforts, and social action wouldn't consist primarily of the provisions of goods, and service is that's not to exclude that there might be a need for that, but that wouldn't be our primary focus again. Our primary focus is you know, what out Baha'i talked about is the building of the character building, the capacity of the community and all right again. Aspects of of our such action may require providing some goods and service is. But our primary focus is to build capacity in the community, among all the community we're engaged in to be part on which were a part of again. It's not a group of people coming in and doing this. We are part of that community. We don't see ourselves as distinct from that community. So the greatest concern of our Baha'i efforts will be the development of the friends capacity to make decisions about their spiritual and material progress and how to implement them. Ideally, our actions will focus on improving some aspect of life. Could be agriculture could be in health. It could be an educated, could be in any of these any of these realms. But the real success we would be looking for is not as wonderful as any progress any of those areas would be. But it's really the our success of me how these actions in these particular areas developed the capacity of the community than to address other developmental issues and increasingly higher levels of complexity and organization and effectiveness. So it was very interesting again. I'll use the example that I'm most familiar with him. That was our works the last two years in Zambia when we began working with community leaders and trying to introduce this activity with the neighborhoods engaged the youth. In this process, we would talk about our program, and it was very difficult. The language of development on behind him is a little bit different. We use a lot of same words, but we use them in different ways and the community. So what do you guys do? And we'd explain we build capacity to solve problems, and that was a bit too abstract. Well, how do you do that? Well, wait. We're going to be learning about some things about agriculture and home gardens. We're gonna be learning about health. Oh, your health project. No, no, we're not. Health Project. Are you in agriculture? You said guards are You know, we're not. We also will be learning about environmental health. Oh, it's an environmental project. And everyone was always trying to put us in a category and we kept saying No, it was it was very difficult. We had to engage in this conversation for months before we even got started. so that one way were in that community. We live in that community way we're getting to know those that would be interested in this. But it was. It was almost like once we got a little bit of clarity that were about building capacity to solve problems in the community, to become promoters of community. Well being in its broadest sense, we have that conversation. People get very excited about it. And then the next time, So what is it we're going to do? And we come back to What? I'm gonna do this. We're gonna do that. Another thing that happens, and maybe traditional dumb it and how it's been, how it's how development organizations have often engaged. The community is in terms of professions that emerge. So what are we gonna be at the end of this? Are we gonna be? And they would have a whole list of things that they know we're not. We're learning how to serve our community, how to promote its well being. Well, there's a lot of lessons we learned about that. But eventually through these discussions to this consultation, we gained a shared understanding. And again it was that initial shared understanding was very different than the shared understanding that emerged after we engaged in the process of learning and working together. But again, our focus wasn't to promote agriculture, although that was very useful for these urban families to have some, um, crops in and around their house, around plots of land that wasn't being used it all and improving the health of their neighborhoods through the sanitation projects that we carried out with them or the preschool education or the learning about about public health. But that really wasn't our focus. Our focus was to build their capacity, then to begin to look at their reality, to understand the reality and begin to define other actions through research, learning about their community, taking that knowledge that they had amassed organizing it and then beginning other avenues of service. And again, it took quite a bit of time to reach that point, and I'll share. One thing that did happen is that, um in this learning process, our action was way developing a curriculum that we would study using developing tutors from each of the neighborhoods or each of the villages, and they would engage in a learning process with youth in the neighborhood. And then, as they learned about certain topics, that would be in carrying out social research in that community. Take that situation to see how to apply it in their community, and each group would do this in a different way. Again, it was It was often times so foreign what they were thinking. Why be able to repair cars, or what am I going to do at the end of this training? Um, way had about, um, we started off with 10 groups, and after four months, we had about if we put it all together. We had about two groups left, and they weren't even two groups. They were a few people left in this group. A few people left in this group, And this is after working with the community leaders, working with our tutors for six months now so we could have if we had stopped at that point. We said, Well, we're done. This is This has been a return failure. If we had been linked to donors, our funding probably would have been cut off, right, But unfortunately that wasn't the case. So he said, Well, what did we learn what we learned. It was amazing, you know, we thought were engaged in a process of building capacity in the community. And of course, our tutors were right from those communities. We realized that just carrying out that action for those months brought tremendous capacity to our tutor. So he said, What would what would we do different this time? How would we do this different? How could we present this to the community? How could we engage them? And we talked to the students who were involved. We talked to the tutors, talked me leaders, and we'd all gained an experience that the community leaders that were supporting us, the students that didn't stick with us and we tried again. And then well, I can happily say that from that we were able to create very solid groups that have continued and graduated and help for men to further groups. So again, um yeah, our focus was building capacity, and even then the process we build capacity were able then to take advantage of it. What was amazing, too, As the group's did solidify, Andi engaged in this learning, engage in their social research, began carrying out projects in the community. It wasn't so much what we were studying. That was sort of a catalyst. But it was there taking the action in the community and learning how to do that. And they would present that to the community leaders to community gatherings. And the community was amazed at what these youth were able to present to them sharing their learning, sharing the actions that they thought they said are you were never able to do this before, so it was really focusing on the capacities rather than specific outcomes. And this kind of leads into this other very important concept. And that is the centrality of knowledge in this process. Um, too often, development project street knowledge is sort of a a commodity that you give you give to people and then with that knowledge, they carry out actions. Speaking of knowledge and development again and after behind the secret divine civilization said, consider carefully all these highly varied phenomena, these concepts, this knowledge, these technical procedures and philosophical systems, these sciences, arts, industries and inventions, all our emanations of the human mind. Whatever people has ventured deeper into the short list, see, have come to excel the rest. He also indicated that close investigation will show that the primary cause of oppression and injustice oven righteousness, irregularity and disorder is the people's lack of religious faith and the fact that they are uneducated. And again, you know, this helps defying what our processes of development arts building the capacity of the community to carry out and defying their own actions. Um, and it's not just creating systems air mechanism by which the community learns on begins focusing on its own issues. It's also the generation of knowledge, and the House of Justice has mentioned this in a number of documents. And I know when I first encountered this idea of generation knowledge, I think my first reaction is we have to go and reinvent the wheel on every community. Is that what are there? Are people gonna have to discover the principles of gravity and then build a body of knowledge? What will this generation of knowledge look like? Well, again, through beginning the process is very small and building upon them, we began to see that this generation of knowledge is that oftentimes the communities have trim trim. Not often, communities have a tremendous wealth of information and knowledge, but it's often not organized in a way that's completely useful to the community. And so our projects, our efforts should learn how to explore that knowledge that exists in the community and allow them to systematize it. And that becomes the generation of knowledge becomes useful, and it becomes available to the community and a different format. And it's really, if you think about access to education or the involvement of knowledge and education again. As Andros says, that counter acts oppression and injustice. The House of Justice adds that the perpetuation of ignorance is a most grievous is the most grievous form of oppression. It reinforces the many walls of prejudice that stands his barriers to the realization of the oneness of humankind. And it not only it is not only access to large, but our participation in the generalize that must be a part of the process. And it's the right of every human being to participate in its generation application into fusion. Now you know, the House of Justice. In that December October 20th message talked about how this development has to begin with stirrings of the grassroots and the forces that are generated by that community. And I think initially it was very difficult for us 30 years ago to think, How does that happen? How do you how to even see those stirrings? And again that was when way weren't part of that community. We were looking at a community over there and they say, Well, how do we perceive those things? And again? So we come back No, to that. This generation of social action, the exploration and learning about social action isn't something that we do with others. It's it's really us doing it in our community and perceiving ourselves as as part of that community, not in any way different. Um, and I think the experience that has allowed us to begin to learn about this most closely has been the Institute with Training Institute. As we began to work with different communities, begin building capacity of the friends, too, build capacity of others in the community stage, step by step. As we learned over the years, we began to see that those that were serving their communities his tutors is chilled. Stressed teachers were part and parcel that community and way could see initiatives as the community was interacting in this way, having more conversations, having this framework of learning, then different actions would begin to emerge again. Naturally. The other interesting thing that we've learned about these two processes that again it's had to unfold and the still unfolding. We're still learning what structures it's taking and says that moves along. And, um, the William A. Settler foundation. It was dishing the Office of Social Economic Development. The House is just talks about how certain efforts that are emerging and if parts well, the show great promise would have the possibility of exploring that further and then be able to systematize that and where other communities air ready to engage because they started this process of of grassroots development at the community level would be would be then ready. In an example of that was the junior youth program Um, it was developed in one community in response to what they saw, his opportunity and challenges, and a program began emerging that your news program it showed such promise that the world center said, let's explore this further. Let's ask number of communities throughout the world to begin exploring this and seeing what we can learn from that over the years it was seeing that it was although it was different, Way had to learn about how to implement it and how to carry out the program. Hell too, to build it from the community level. It was it was showing great, great promise. And you remember in the house I just said that now the juniors pregnant become the fourth core activity. It was it was not just, um I thought that that sounds good. That's that's an area we should probably do kill us, do that. It was completely out of learning on a very grassroots level and building up and then taken experience out further and then systematize ing. And then again, it wasn't that we all in every one of our communities, began implementing it in full scale. We have almost emulate that same process, but now a lot of learning have been I'm set out for us. The Women's Settler Foundation would also asked a number of years ago to also begin exploring another branch of development, and that was to look a health education. And, um, we began process of researching working with communities. Identifying the issues would be the most critical to the communities. Way began developing a serious of training materials that would emulate book to where you would be doing home visits. But instead of home visits around, deepening things would be home visits around health themes and helping people improve their health that way. And what was interesting is that way learned a lot way developed what I think are some good materials. But we found that we had an experience that in some ways, um, where we tried the health program where we didn't have a stronger foundation of the institute, that community wasn't able to look at development holistically, wasn't able to see the possibilities. It was only where the institute had been that this spirit of service and collaboration of disinterested service, off willingness to serve the community without any anticipation of a benefit other than serving their community and, um, way decided we had to kind of shelves the health project. It was interesting that the world center, as we were moving forward with the self project, said you want to go gradually. We said, no, no, we've got the problem. We're ready to go. Okay, okay. And they let us learn, and then we thought, Huh? And we'll report back. We've learned that it's better to go very slowly, Uh, and then then again later we realize now what they told us anyway. Learning is wonderful, and we realize that as as the way didn't have, the abundant resource is that were needed to support that effort. And that's what we but we had to learn that. But again, hopefully having learned it in a few places, now weaken generally. And that's another thing is that we don't want to build these programs or add to them prematurely or an inorganic way, and we can begin to learn from these lessons. No nothing. I want to just draw your attention to our closing moments. Here is again growing on example The Learning Institute. And that is, um, I don't know how many of you have worked in programs overseas, but imagine this a program that had three people working at the national level full time, and then it had volunteer coordinators in 20 different regions clusters, and in each of those clusters there were others. They were part of the volunteer support team, working with other volunteers who weekly were giving of their time to educate others to be involved in education process with others. And these are our study circles, Arjun youth groups and are, um did I say children's classes, children's classes? And you get thinking about your experience in development with other programs. What was there was amazing. It was It was a system that involves 700 at least 700 people serving their community. Each of those regions was self organizing, self directing. All of those efforts will be done by volunteers that didn't expect any reward other than serving their community, and this was coordinated by a staff of four at the national level. Can you think of any organization in the world carrying out programs that wouldn't die for that? I mean, that's too dramatic, and and you know how much money that would cost outside of this environment? I mean, they actually couldn't achieve that. They would not be able to achieve that because it didn't. Most of those efforts don't call upon the coherence of the spiritual and material aspects of life, and that's what that program was able to do when people would ask, How do you do this? What we could explain that and they would say, Well, tell us how to do that without bat part without that spiritually and there's just no way to do that. So again, I think this amazing process that again we can't anticipate we have to see at Acid unfolds what the next stage is our. But these last 15 years have brought us to a point through the instant process. They're seeing how that has grown in community after community, to see how to engage and how to pick up on those stirrings of the grassroots. And again, it's not because we're coming from without. It's because we're right there in that community part of that community. We're interacting with the community and I think, what are they? Very, very exciting? Um, components right now of, of all the activities that were engaged in, whether it's at building our community, of learning to expand and consolidate our community through the process of building community, taking the faith out into the larger community and making that our community and then as we have abundant resource is begin to explore social action. The interesting thing now is that it allows each and every behind to participate. That's amazing. Again, development organizations are thinking, How do we engage the population? How do we do? And here it is. Through these relatively short time House of Justice guiding us through this learning press. We've reached this point where each and every one of us can find the neighborhood and begin exploring this. Of course, I'm actually creeping into the discussion on coherence, but I hope that again, um, our understanding of the guidance and as we go forward in the session after this to begin exploring the direct guys, the House of Justice and begin sharing our experiences with these principles will begin to see how each and every one of us can immediately engage in these processes. Um, well, thank you very much for your attention.
