Community-Based Initiatives
In addition to carrying out more than a hundred thousand grassroots initiatives of fixed duration yearly, Bahá’ís—often working shoulder to shoulder with others—are engaged in over 2,000 ongoing projects that are sustained over time and are generally larger in scope. Some emerge from the kinds of smaller efforts described in the section on First Stirrings, while others are established from the beginning as structured projects.
As informal initiatives of social action emerge at the grassroots, there may be circumstances in which certain efforts, through a process of consultation, action, and reflection, give rise to endeavors of a more sustained nature. This occurs as those carrying out a particular effort observe fruitful results, gain greater experience, and identify constructive pathways for systematic action. In some instances, a long-term project may be envisioned as such from the outset. Ownership of sustained social action endeavors must rest with the community itself, given that capacity building is central to Bahá’í efforts in the area of development. In this light, those involved increase the range of their activities in an organic fashion, informed by their reading of reality and without undue pressure from outside. Their mode of operation remains one of learning in action. Though concerted action is expected to lead to concrete results over time, success is measured chiefly in terms of the effect the action has on building the capacity of the population to address development issues at progressively higher levels of complexity and effectiveness.
Where such endeavors are emerging, local Bahá’í administrative institutions have also played an important role in providing encouragement and support. As a voice of moral authority, they help ensure that groups of individuals working to improve the conditions of their societies proceed in a manner that is increasingly coherent with other processes of community life and is consistent with principles such as trustworthiness, integrity, and selfless service. In a growing number of places, communities are able to draw on promising educational programs that have been developed further afield and that are consistent with their local reality. Such programs serve to reinforce individual and institutional capacities that exist in a community, often giving rise to the creation of additional sustained projects focusing on one or another aspect of community life.
“The seed does not suddenly become the tree; the embryo does not at once become the man; the mineral substance does not in a moment become the stone: No, all these grow and develop gradually until they attain the limit of perfection. ”
—‘Abdu’l-Bahá
Today, there are over 2,000 community-based initiatives under way around the world, some of which have evolved further into community-based organizations with basic administrative structures. Examples include community schools providing education to children, larger academic schools reaching a broader cross-section of a region, local clinics offering basic health services, radio stations producing programs for the surrounding population, cooperatives that encourage the sharing of resources and provide assistance to each member, language and literacy programs offered to newcomers in a country to help them participate more meaningfully in community life, or community gardens in urban neighborhoods that provide nutritious food for the local residents and strengthen social ties. The example from India below offers an illustration of the nature of such an initiative and how it might emerge.
