Inspiring Youth

“Inspiring Youth” are sessions, mainly junior youth to inspire them to develop the skills and insights they need to be of service to others and the community.

The junior youth spiritual empowerment program is a programme developed within the Bahá’í community to help young people aged between 11 and 15 to navigate this crucial stage in their lives.

This programme is open to everyone. This programme is in the tradition of many valuable educational and community service programmes – the junior youth programme is based on universal values and concepts that are fundamental to everyone. Values that sustain and nurture human well-being

Though developed within the Bahá’í community, the programme is not a formal religious programme. While the groups explore themes from a Bahá’í perspective, people of most religions – and none – will find the themes to be universal – justice, love, truth, equality, peace, education, courage, and friendship are just some of the concepts explored in these groups.

Participants in these groups engage in activities like art, discussion, drama, cooperative games, study, sport, story telling and acts of community service. For the past few years all over Scotland – and indeed all over the world – there are groups of young people engaged in this process designed to help them work out who they are, what they think and feel and how they can contribute to positive change in society.

These early adolescent years are an important time. At this age most young people have a powerful sense of justice and a willingness to help others. Too often these qualities struggle to find a positive expression. This programme helps them to look at the world, make conscious choices and allows them to form a strong moral and ethical identity as it helps them to find ways to contribute to the well-being of their communities and the world at large.

By developing all their dimensions – their spiritual and moral qualities, their intellectual capabilities and their capacities for service to society – teens and preteens begin to develop a sense of themselves and see that they can become agents of positive change in the world.