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What does BIO do?
As the Friends will know the National Spiritual Assembly, acting on the guidance of the Universal House of Justice, established an Office of External Affairs some months ago. It is working in an exciting and developing area of outreach for the Faith in this country, and includes in its work some of what the Bahá'í Information Office did in the past.
The new arrangement means that the Bahá'í Information Office is able to concentrate on its "core business", which is to help local communities and other agencies of the Faith in this country develop their own activity in publicity, public information, and external affairs. In doing so it acts under the guidance of the National Spiritual Assembly and in terms of the Universal House of Justice's key letter on the subject (10th August 1994).
BIO is essentially a service body, that is, its main role is to serve other institutions. It prepares and distributes resource materials covering a range of subjects - press leads, training manuals and guidance relating to public information, sample adverts and radio scripts, papers on a number of topics which are of interest to the wider public, and other items. It maintains a resource bank of these and other materials including the many statements from the Bahá'í International Community and those issued ("stance papers") by the National Spiritual Assembly or other bodies which were prepared for a specific purpose but can be used with a wider audience. Distribution is both on paper and in electronic form and using the Internet BIO has developed a world-wide service role for the Bahá'í community.
The National Spiritual Assembly gives the Bahá'í Information Office responsibility for specific projects it decides on, such as Agenda 21, the Centenary, and more recently the Web of Faith project. BIO prepares and distributes the materials and responds to requests for help and guidance.
The Office also deals with general enquiries about the Faith from the public, and acts on the National Assembly's behalf to contact publishers of books and magazines which have included inaccurate information about the Faith and seek to have this corrected.
The question of training of local communities and other agencies of the Faith in external affairs and public information also falls to BIO (in conjunction with the Office of External Affairs). Shortage of human and material resources has meant that this has never been carried out as widely or consistently as we would all want, but more is being done.
Inevitably such a wide area brings other tasks from time to time, and a full list would be exhausting, but BIO always bears in mind its primary responsibilities to service, encourage, advise, and train the community in this vitally important field.
New resource available
The Bahá'í Council for Northern Ireland recently made a submission in response to a request for views on sustainability and sustainability indicators from the Department of the Environment. In setting out an approach it drew on the sort of indicators put forward in the Bahá'í International Community's paper "Valuing Spirituality in Development". It is an excellent example of how Bahá'í views can be presented to mainstream bodies in a way they will appreciate as relevant to their concerns.
To obtain a copy please contact the Bahá'í Information Office (SAE appreciated as always).
Bringing you up-to-date
Once again we thank everyone for their contributions and the fundraising suggestions that continue to come in to BASED-UK (Bahá'í Agency for Social and Economic Development). There are some very interesting ideas which are being processed at the moment.
Total donations have risen to (UK pounds)19,400 and are being used to support:
The agricultural rehabilitation programme following Hurricane Mitch. Now is the time for replanting and advisers are urgently working on a strategy. The SAT rural education programme in Honduras. This is the long term project supported by the DFID grant (see Feb '98 and Jan '99 issues of Bahá'í Journal UK). This has just been increased by 30% for the remaining three years of the project. However, we still need to back the original grant with funds from our own or outside sources and if these are not forthcoming we will be forced to take the money from the Office of Social and Economic Development in Haifa. One difficulty in gaining backing from outside is that we cannot yet show a large support base of our own. The El Hogar Tierra Orphanage in Honduras - (UK pounds)25 a month supports one child (see Jan '99, Bahá'í Journal UK)
Please continue your support and for BASED-UK generally. If we are to be the Oxfam of the future we cannot flag or falter. There will undoubtedly be further calls on our resources as the decline in our civilisation escalates.
You can earmark your donations for any of the above or, even better, leave it to the discretion of BASED-UK to make the allocation. Cheques should be made payable to: BASED-UK and sent to the Treasurer: Ardeshir Laloui, 30 Cypress Ave, Welwyn Garden City, Herts AL7 1HN.
For more information contact: Susie Howard, 22 East Saint Helen Street, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 5EB. Tel/Fax: 01235 533278 e-mail: srhoward80@hotmail.com
We need faith to let our youth go
Do you worry about your children going on a Year Of Service? You are not alone. This is why YosDesk encourages preparation time both in a spiritual as well as a practical way. Everytime we think of our youth on their YOS we should just say "Dastam Bigir, 'Abdu'l-Bahá" (take my hand, 'Abdu'l-Bahá). For it is simply trusting that He will take care of them. The bird has flown from the nest. God in His love and wisdom may let them falter and tumble but he cares for our youth and loves them; these are the tests as they strengthen their wings. So we have to trust and pray and hopefully our YOS volunteers do not lose heart when things go wrong.
This is demonstrated by the account from Tom Richards, which follows, and shows how volunteers often have to adapt and end up serving in a totally different way than they initially anticipated or indeed hoped for. We hope his account will illustrate and encourage others to be more accepting and philosophical about their YOS projects and serve as a reminder to volunteers and their parents of the essence of their service. As long as YOS volunteers are willing to be flexible and take things in their stride, the horror stories can become the cherished anecdotes of the future and their endeavours will be remembered with great nostalgia!
Expect the unexpected
Tom Richards from West Oxfordshire (now studying at Bristol University) served in Honduras in 1997/98; here follows part of his account - Initially, I went to serve in Bayán in Palacios, a town in La Mosquitia. This area is one of the poorest in Latin America, and has no roads or telephone lines going to it. There are three ways of getting there: by boat, by pickup truck along the beach, and by plane. The plane trip was uneventful except for the landing: the airstrip starts on the edge of the lagoon, so as you land, the water gets closer and closer until you think you must be crashing, and then the airstrip appears underneath you just as you think the plane can't get any lower.
I got off the airplane not knowing what to expect, and found a small slice of the city transported. Mosquito-proof individual rooms, good beds, a large library, food cooked for you, and all in a beautiful set of gardens planted with many coconut, mango and orange trees. The project itself consisted of a hospital, and also as the headquarters of a pilot SAT programme. The hospital was why Bayán was founded in the first place, by two Bahá'í families, to address the health needs of a community, which was receiving very little attention from the government or other aid agencies. They started ten years ago with a large field, and now have three large houses, probably the best in Palacios, and a small hospital. The SAT programme is a rural education programme, designed to help people to improve their community, rather than flee to the cities.
I got a surprise when I talked to the then director of Bayán, Kurt Henne. I had come out to Bayán, with the fond notion that I would be working in the lab at the hospital, helping teach SAT science courses, and work on a biological survey of the local estuary (Palacios, like most of the towns in the area, is very close to the sea). I was told that other volunteers were already helping at the hospital, so they didn't need me there. There was a policy with the SAT groups of only letting local people do the teaching, so they didn't need me, and then I was informed that the estuary survey had failed to get funding, and so I couldn't work there either. This left the gardens, painting, doing inventory, making up forms, fixing the motor on the boat, and quite a lot of other things not quite as immediately appealing as those I had thought I was going to do. I finished by doing these things for the rest of my stay at Bayán (seven and a half months).
There were, however, times when I got away from Bayán: we went off on a two week teaching trip up the coast. There were seven of us, six gringos (the Spanish term for any non-Spaniard) and one local girl. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a fiasco, but we learnt valuable lessons in teaching. Once, I went out to help adjudicate a SAT exam with three others, walking for six hours along the beach to get to a small town. We stayed out there for a week, sleeping in hammocks in a hut, eating with our hosts, bathing in the sea every evening and doing exams all day. Another time, I went out with the other director of Bayán, Luis Maldonado, and we walked for eight hours to get to another village further up the coast. Supposedly, we were to organise a Local Spiritual Assembly election, but nobody turned up, and we had to leave matters in the hands of the community and start back to Bayán the next morning.
To be continued in the next issue ...
YOSDesk Team - Sylvia Miley, 97 Waterloo Road, Southport PR8 4QN. Tel/fax: 01704 551514. Esmyr Koomen, Tel: 01865 407887 e-mail: yosdesk@koomen.demon.co.uk www.warble.com/Bahai/YearOfService
Website up and running!
Inspired by the "Web of Faith" Project launched by the UK Bahá'í Information Office, The UK Travel Teacher & Homefront Pioneer Advisory Service have launched their web site kindly hosted by Bahá'í Computers International (BCI). The site will be of interest to anyone who would like to pioneer or travel teach to or within the UK. Although brand new, the site already boasts the following services:
List of Priority Goal Areas
List of Communities in Danger of Lapsing
Lists of Lapsed Assemblies that could re-form next Ridván
List of Unopened Districts
Links to Bahá'í Councils and other committees with a presence on the web
Links to UK Communities that are On-line
Link to Local/District Councils on the www
Links to useful papers/documents about the UK Advice for Travel Teachers
Advice for Receiving Communities
Guidelines for Pioneers and Goal Areas
On-line form for completion by would-be Travel Teachers or Pioneers
On-line form for completion by Communities Requesting Travel Teachers/Pioneers
Directions to Guardian's Resting Place and National Office On-Line
Maps of the UK "Bulletin Board" where Goal Areas can post details about their community
Other Useful Links
Please send us the URL of your community if we do not have it listed. Suggestions for improving the site and information updates always welcome e-mail: tts@bahai.org.uk If you are a goal area, please send us some information about your community. You will see two examples of the type of information would-be Travel Teachers will find useful at www.bci.org/tts/cominfo.htm
Please consider linking to the site and including information about it in any publications (electronic or hard copy) for which you are responsible (bearing in mind that it will only be of interest to Bahá'ís).
Our special thanks to BIO and the BCI for their unfailing support and assistance.
Travel Teacher & Homefront Pioneer Advisory Service tts@bahai.org.uk and/or: Rocky Grove, 18 Blakelands Ave, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire CV31 IRJ. Tel: 01926 312342 e-mail: tts@mercia.demon.co.uk
Can you do this work?
The clock is relentlessly ticking and we are now into the last year of the Four Year Plan, it is a time of great upheaval in the world, a time when some of our pioneers are having to leave their posts because of the problems thrust upon them, a time when the Universal House of Justice has asked this community to send out "a stream of travel teachers", a time when several countries are asking for pioneers to help them to firmly establish the Faith. It is a time when we must stand up and be counted and be ready to make a sacrifice, it is a time when we need to make our maximum effort to spread the "Divine Fragrances of Bahá'u'lláh". This time will not come again and only Bahá'ís can do this work.
The following is a quotation from the Ridván 155 message from the Universal House of Justice: "In a mere two years (now one year) the Four Year Plan will be concluded, just some months before the end of an unforgettable century. Looming before us, then, is a twofold date with destiny. In extolling the unprecedented potential of the twentieth century, the beloved Master averred that its traces will last forever. Seized with such a vision, the mind of the alert follower of the Blessed Beauty must undoubtedly be astir with anxious questions as to what part he or she will play in these few fleeting years, and as to whether he or she will, at the end of this seminal period, have made a mark among those enduring traces which the mind of the Master perceived. To ensure a soul satisfying answer, one thing above all else is necessary: to act, to act now, and to continue to act."
Pioneers and Travel Teachers are needed in Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Faroes, Portugal, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Gibraltar, Poland. There are other countries as well. Whether you are positive or shy about being a pioneer or travel teacher then please contact CIPTT NOW - remember time is short.
Africa beckons
Long term mature and dedicated travel teachers and/or pioneers wanted NOW -there are several beautiful small towns and virgin lands that have to be opened to the Faith before the end of the Four Year Plan. Financial independence is necessary, though some assistance may be available. Please contact CIPTT.
Botswana welcomes travel-teachers who can spend some time in the more remote areas of Botswana, a Southern African country, in order to teach and deepen new and old Bahá'ís. Please contact the CIPTT.
CIPTT contact: Edgar Boyett, 12 Lapwing Grove, Guildford, Surrey GU4 7DZ. Tel: 01483-568926 e-mail: 106131,1062@compusrve.com www.warble.com/Bahai/YearOfService