Raising up Animators of Junior Youth Groups
There will shortly be a new Book 5: Raising up Animators of Junior Youth Groups. The previous Book 5: Teaching Children's Classes, Grade 2, will now become Book 3A and will be considered a course "branching out from Book3". Please see the quotations below for some additional guidance on this matter. More info to come soon!
"We welcome the decision of the Institute...to move the book currently occupying the fifth position in the sequence to a set of courses branching out from Book 3 for preparing Bahá'í Children's class teachers and to insert in the fifth place a new book for raising up animators of junior youth groups." - Letter from the Universal House of Justice to all National Spiritual Assemblies, 28 December 2005
"Whatever the nature of the cluster, it is imperative to pay close attention to children and junior youth everywhere. Concern for the moral and spiritual education of young people is asserting itself forcefully on the consciousness of humanity, and no attempt at community building can afford to ignore it. What has become especially apparent during the current Five Year Plan is the efficacy of educational programmes aimed at the spiritual empowerment of junior youth. When accompanied for three years through a programme that enhances their spiritual perception, and encouraged to enter the main sequence of institute courses at the age of fifteen, they represent a vast reservoir of energy and talent that can be devoted to the advancement of spiritual and material civilization. So impressed are we by the results already achieved, and so compelling is the need, that we will urge all National Assemblies to consider the junior youth groups formed through programmes implemented by their training institutes a fourth core activity in its own right and to promote its wide-scale multiplication." - Letter from the Universal House of Justice to the Continental Board of Counsellors dated 27 December 2005.
