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Learning to Develop Human Resources for Expansion and Consolidation

In its Riḍván 2000 message, the Universal House of Justice stated that “the system of training institutes established throughout the world with great rapidity” qualified as “the single greatest legacy of the Four Year Plan” in the field of expansion and consolidation.^[1] Several months earlier in its 26 November 1999 message to the Bahá’ís of the world, the House of Justice had described this achievement in the following terms:

The accomplishments during this period are encouraging indeed. An impressive network of training institutes on a scale but dimly imagined at the start of the Plan has been established throughout the world. These nascent centers of learning have made significant strides in developing formal programs and in putting into place effective systems for the delivery of courses. Reports indicate that the number of believers benefiting directly from training courses has climbed to nearly 100,000. Without question, the capacity of the worldwide community to develop its human resources has been distinctly enhanced.

The effects of this systematic approach to human resource development are making themselves felt in the lives of all three protagonists of the Plan—the individual believer, the institutions, and the local community. There has been an upsurge in teaching activities undertaken at the initiative of the individual. Spiritual Assemblies, Councils, and committees have grown in their ability to guide the believers in their individual and collective endeavors. And community life has flourished, even in localities long dormant, as new patterns of thought and behavior have emerged.^[2]

In this light, the House of Justice made the following remarks at the outset of the Five Year Plan in 2001 regarding the effects of the institute on the individual, institutions, and community and its continued importance in the work of the Cause:

A searching analysis of the Four Year Plan recently prepared for us by the International Teaching Centre demonstrates that the training institute is effective not only in enhancing the powers of the individual, but also in vitalizing communities and institutions. The continued development of training institutes in the diverse countries and territories of the world, then, must be a central feature of the new Plan.^[3]

The training institute has been defined by the House of Justice as an agency of the National Spiritual Assembly “charged with the task of developing human resources in all or part of country.”^[4] A letter written on behalf of the House of Justice explained that the growth of the Faith depends on a systematic process of human resource development:

In its message of 26 December 1995 to the Conference of the Continental Boards of Counsellors, the House of Justice clearly explained that occasional courses of instruction and the informal activities of community life, though important, had not proven sufficient as a means of human resource development. It indicated further that a systematic process for the development of human resources was essential to the sustained large-scale expansion of the Faith. To conceive and nurture an educational process of the magnitude envisioned by the Universal House of Justice is vastly different than thinking about one’s own interests, which is not to say that personal study and spiritual growth are not legitimate and natural concerns of the individual.^[5]

Creating the capacity within each national community to establish and administer such an educational process required an enormous amount of effort and a high degree of discipline on the part of the institutions of the Faith during the Four Year Plan. The Spiritual Assembly of Thailand was counseled at the start of the Plan:

Those engaged in this area of service—whether as teachers, coordinators, or members of the institute’s board—will have to realize that there is much to be learned. How to offer the courses and how to attract the believers to them, which courses to offer at a central location and which ones to conduct in the towns and villages—these are among the many questions to which they will have to seek answers. They should never lose heart when difficulties appear, but should persevere in their endeavors, for only in this way will the institute acquire the capacity to develop the human resources of the Thai community.^[6]

The methodology to be adopted in creating this capacity, the House of Justice advised, was one of action, reflection, and consultation. It encouraged the friends involved to approach their tasks with “an open attitude towards learning,” fully cognizant of the need to “make decisions” about the work of the institute, “to implement them, to reflect on the results, and to make adjustments in the light of experience”^[7] “Through such an approach,” the House of Justice assured one National Assembly, “your institute will succeed in gradually increasing its capacity to develop the human resources”^[8] of the community.

In this sense, in calling for the establishment of training institutes for the development of human resources, the House of Justice was also asking the Bahá’í world to learn what it means to work in a learning mode. And as the friends everywhere entered into this mode, they gradually came to better understand the nature of the institute and how to go about establishing it. “It is important to realize that the development of the institute in your national community, like everywhere else,” it has been explained, “is a dynamic process in which all those involved gradually reach higher and higher levels of understanding as to the nature of the process itself.”^[9] The fact that the Bahá’í community worldwide has acquired a vocabulary necessary to speak on the subject indicates how successful it was both in creating capacity for developing human resources, on the one hand, and in adopting a posture of learning in all its affairs, on the other. Words and phrases such as “study circle,” “sequence of courses,” “institute campaigns,” and “practice” are now commonplace. To speak about a “pyramid of human resources” or a “system of distance education” evokes a practical set of ideas in the minds of Bahá’ís everywhere. It is well understood by all when the training institute is referred to as the “engine for growth.”

To reach this point required learning in two principal areas: in the nature of programs for the development of human resources and in the system for their delivery. This was underscored in the message dated 9 January 2001 from the House of Justice:

Drawing on the wealth of experience now accumulated in this area of endeavor, institutes will have to provide their communities with a constant stream of human resources to serve the process of entry by troops. Elements of a system that can meet the training needs of large numbers of believers have already been tested worldwide and have proven themselves. Study circles, reinforced by extension courses and special campaigns, have shown their ability to lend structure to the process of spiritual education at the grassroots. The value of a sequence of courses, each one following the other in a logical pattern and each one building on the achievements of the previous ones, has become abundantly clear.^[10]

As indicated in the above passage, it took time to come to an understanding of the role of a properly structured sequence of courses in enhancing the friends’ capabilities of service. The document “Training Institutes,” prepared for and approved by the House of Justice, had advised that “the complexity of the task of defining each sequence and elaborating the materials” should not be underestimated.^[11] In this respect, many National Assemblies felt that the wisest course of action was “to make a start, using the tried and tested sequence of course materials” already available because of the pressing need to move forward.^[12] It was in the light of such considerations that eventually more and more National Assemblies decided that their training institutes should adopt the materials of the Ruhi Institute for their courses:

When the concept of the training institute was introduced by the House of Justice, it left National Spiritual Assemblies free to adopt whatever kind of systematic training they felt best suited to their countries. Quite rapidly, however, it became evident, through experience, that the courses of the Ruhi Institute, developed over many years in Colombia, were far more effective than any other generally available. Some believers who did not have the experience of using the courses were of the opinion that they were too “elementary” for the people of their country, but, in one country after another, the Ruhi Institute courses have proved their effectiveness in virtually every environment. The House of Justice has still not limited National Assemblies in their choice of institute courses, but it has been pleased to note how most National Assemblies have recognized the effectiveness of the Ruhi Institute’s main sequence of courses and have put it to full use—a use that in due time will enable them to develop additional materials suited to their specific environments, that supplement the books of the Ruhi Institute.^[13]

Though born out of the experience of the Bahá’í community of Colombia in large-scale expansion and consolidation, the materials of the Ruhi Institute have clearly demonstrated their global applicability. The House of Justice has noted in a letter dated 26 July 2004 written on its behalf that those national communities which have adopted the materials “have increasingly shown the beneficial effect of this training on the expansion of the teaching work, the rise in the level of human resources, and the breaking down of the earlier barriers between Bahá’ís and others in worshipping together and in areas of service, including the education of children.”^[14] Further, with the spread in the use of its materials, the letter stated, “the Ruhi Institute has continued to evolve, incorporating the experiences and suggestions of friends in many parts of the world” into its materials.^[15]

In communities where the materials of the Ruhi Institute have been adopted as the main sequence of the courses, training institutes are beginning to supplement these courses with others that are tailored to the specific needs of the populations they seek to serve. These other courses are generally offered after the completion of one or another course in the main sequence, which, in this case, can be thought of as a trunk of a tree with branches extending out from it. This model was of course discussed in the 9 January 2001 message of the House of Justice. “The main sequence,” the message read, “much like the trunk of a tree, supports courses branching out from it, each branch dedicated to some specific area of training.”^[16]

With the majority of national communities adopting such a model, using the courses of the Ruhi Institute as the main sequence, they have begun to derive unexpected benefits from this arrangement. The letter dated 26 July quoted above went on to say that “a fortunate side effect of the choice of one set of materials by so many communities has been a commonality of experience in this vitally important Bahá’í activity throughout the world.”^[17] The letter was referring to a statement from the Riḍván 2004 message of the House of Justice:

On assessing the opportunities and needs of their respective communities, the great majority of National Spiritual Assemblies have chosen to adopt the course materials devised by the Ruhi Institute, finding them most responsive to the Plan’s needs. This has had the collateral benefit that the same materials have been translated into many languages and, wherever Bahá’ís travel, they find other friends following the same path and familiar with the same books and methods.^[18]

Adopting a sequence of courses in this way has enabled the institutions to think more systematically about developing the human resources of their communities. For they could now set numerical goals “as to the number of believers who will pass through courses at various levels during a specified time period.”^[19] The metaphor of a “pyramid” of human resources is sometimes used in this respect, as explained in the passage below to one National Assembly:

In letters written on its behalf to other National Spiritual Assemblies, the House of Justice has stated that the development of human resources in a country may be likened to the building of an ever-expanding pyramid, whose base must be constantly broadened. An increasing number of friends are recruited to enter the first basic course, and relatively significant percentages are then helped to reach higher and higher courses, enhancing thereby their capacity for service.^[20]

It is in this context that the system for the delivery of courses—the other principal area of learning—becomes important. In order to have “ever-growing contingents of believers” pass through the sequence of courses, training institutes soon came to realize that they would need to put in place a decentralized system of delivery. “The limitations of the approach in which institute courses are offered only to groups of believers at central facilities”^[21] were all too apparent:

The primary challenge before you is to help hundreds and then thousands of the believers in Haiti to enter your institute program and study a well-defined sequence of courses. Clearly, you cannot accomplish this by inviting them all to one central location.^[22]

The idea that finally emerged was the study circle because it enabled the curriculum to reach large numbers. In this connection, the House of Justice noted that the approach that seems to be “most effective in reaching believers at the local level is the formation of study circles which are coordinated by a national institute.… In this case, a sequence of courses is offered to small groups of believers in a locality by tutors or teachers trained by the institute itself.”^[23] A letter to an individual dated 24 May 2001 elaborated on the theme:

As you know, a study circle is not a structure in the Bahá’í Administrative Order. Rather, it is one element of a scheme of distance education that is showing great promise as it becomes more firmly established in Bahá’í communities throughout the world. From the reports received at the World Centre, it is clear that the success of this scheme depends on the degree to which the flexibility inherent to it is exploited. In many places a study circle will continue with the same tutor from course to course. Yet the membership of a study circle does not have to be fixed. Often the demands of life, especially the mobility of people today, prevent a person from studying the full sequence of courses with one group. Thus, after the completion of a course, one or two friends may find that they have to suspend their studies for a time and join another group for the next course when their circumstances allow. It is precisely because of this inherent flexibility that the scheme is proving to be so effective in moving a significant percentage of believers through a sequence of courses and in developing thereby the human resources of the community.^[24]

Of course, some form of organizational structure is required in order to maintain a system of distance education in which a number of study circles are conducted throughout the year. This organizational structure does not need to be overly elaborate. A “national coordinator, assisted by regional coordinators if necessary, as well as a growing number of tutors in the country,”^[25] is generally sufficient, in addition, of course, to the institute board appointed by the National Spiritual Assembly in consultation with the Counsellors. The following excerpt from a letter addresses the roles of the board and coordinator:

With such a focused aim, the roles of the respective participants are also clear. The coordinator needs to operate at the level of implementation, carrying out day-to-day plans and activities and ensuring that the basic function of the institute is performed—this, with the assistance of the tutors and any staff if necessary. The board oversees the institute process as a whole, largely through the periodic reports of the coordinator and through occasional consultations. It will want to make itself readily accessible to the coordinator, providing the atmosphere in which he or she can share ideas, seek the board’s views on the possibilities and challenges facing the institute, and benefit from its advice. To carry out its role, the board does not need to meet frequently, as does a committee charged with undertaking a set of specific tasks.^[26]

As mentioned in the 26 December 1995 message of the House of Justice, the structure of the organization in place in a community to oversee the development of human resources will depend to some extent upon the size of the community. National Assemblies with geographically large communities have chosen in consultation with the Counsellors to devolve responsibility for the implementation of courses on training institutes at the regional level, each with its own board and a regional coordinator. Regardless of the arrangements in place, the institutional capacity created in most national communities to impart spiritual education to growing numbers of believers was significant enough by 2001 for the House of Justice to make the following announcement:

… there are many countries in which the institute is the only structure developing the capacity to organize and maintain courses in locality after locality. As this approach is working well with youth and adults, and increasingly for junior youth, there is no reason why the training institute should not also shoulder similar responsibility with respect to children, where necessary. As a general rule, institutes do not take on the administration of plans and programs for expansion and consolidation. Conducting children’s classes, however, is a unique enterprise, of special urgency. In those countries where the task is given to it, the institute becomes a center of learning intensely engaged in the spiritual education of the friends from the tenderest age through adulthood.^[27]

The above offers a vision of a powerful educational institution offering a range of programs for children, junior youth, youth over 15, and adults—all carried out in the context of the expansion and consolidation of the Faith. As a means of ensuring that its programs keep current with the demands of growth at the level of the cluster, two additional mechanisms have proven to be important. One is the intensive institute campaign. Such campaigns, the House of Justice explained in its Riḍván 2005 message, when they pay due attention to the practice required, “have remained the vehicle for stimulating growth at the cluster level.”^[28] And when a cluster approaches the point where it is ready to launch an intensive program of growth, it is often necessary to have an institute coordinator at the level of the cluster—the other mechanism. Such a coordinator is “responsible for ensuring that the number of study circles, children’s classes, and junior youth groups steadily multiplies.”^[29] He or she is “required to work with a growing contingent of tutors and children’s class teachers in the cluster, maintaining their enthusiasm and helping them to improve the quality of their services.”^[30]

The above describes in the briefest terms the nature of the institutional capacity that has been built through successive global Plans, beginning with the Four Year Plan, to develop the human resources needed for the expansion and consolidation of the Faith. As noted earlier, “the effects of this systematic approach to human resource development are making themselves felt in the lives of all three protagonists of the Plan—the individual believer, the institutions, and the local community.” National Assemblies had to develop the capacity to encourage and empower the friends in their efforts to advance the institute process and to ensure that the institute had what it needed to succeed at its task:

As for your National Assembly, what is needed most from you at this time is the kind of enthusiastic and energetic support for the institute process that comes from an ever-increasing understanding of the dynamics of growth in Ethiopia. Through constant encouragement, the judicious assignment of resources, and frequent consultations with the Counsellors, you can promote the learning called for in the Five Year Plan and ensure that the creative energies of the many dedicated Ethiopian believers are channeled constructively and the vast potential of your community is realized.^[31]

For the friends serving in the institute to be empowered in this way, they would need a wide degree of latitude to carry out their work:

Crucial to the future success of the institute will be the freedom of movement and action that it enjoys. The institute is, of course, an agency functioning under your aegis, and ultimately matters related to its operation rest with you. However, at this point in the growth of the Faith, the mandate of the institute is fairly clear-cut: A sequence of courses has been adopted as the national program for the development of human resources. It is the job of the institute, then, to help a steadily increasing number of youth and adults advance through that sequence and to carry out the concomitant task of organizing and maintaining classes for junior youth and children. There is little need for lengthy and frequent consultations to set direction and devise and rethink fundamental plans. Now is the time for action, and the central participants driving the institute process should be granted the latitude required to perform their functions effectively. Specifically, the national coordinator should be invested with enough authority to ensure that the basic purpose of the institute to raise up active supporters of the Faith is fulfilled.^[32]

It also meant that National Assemblies would be challenged to find new approaches to overseeing the work of its agencies:

Your institute has been structured so as to accommodate a range of dynamic programs, including one in the area of mass media communications through the radio station. At the apex of its organizational structure is a board of directors that sets general policies, offers guidance as needed, and provides a forum for the executive director to share concerns and seek advice from time to time. Surely it is to be expected that such a complex organization would develop certain patterns and cycles in performing its operations, including phases for planning and budgeting. To halt the established rhythm to enable the National Spiritual Assembly to carry out an evaluation of the institute’s performance and give it instructions does not seem justified. This is not to say that the desire of the National Assembly to follow the progress of the institute is not a legitimate one. Indeed, at any time during the year or over the course of the Five Year Plan, you may wish to review the institute’s work, along with the Counsellors, and provide guidance and encouragement. But this should not prevent the institute from proceeding with its programs, nor cause it to suffer from the lack of financial resources. Further, when adjustments are felt necessary, they should be done in a way that does not slacken the gathering momentum of the processes of growth in your community. You should remember that, in the final analysis, much of the success of your efforts to meet the requirements of the Five Year Plan will depend on the continued steady progress of your national agency for the development of human resources.^[33]

National Assemblies gradually had to come to appreciate that although having human resources in the field provided communities with the manpower needed to ensure that the growth of the Faith could move forward, this should never preclude the participation of all of the friends in its work. However, Assemblies also had to realize that certain positions would necessarily involve some formal preparation:

Clearly the way should be open to all the friends to participate in the affairs of the Faith, to the extent that their personal circumstances and their desire to serve allow. In general, within the Bahá’í community, a distinction between “trained” and “untrained” believers is unwarranted. There do exist certain positions of service, however, that require specific qualifications, and an Assembly will naturally consider these qualifications in naming individual believers to fill them. In the case of a position responsible for coordinating courses offered according to a curriculum that has been adopted by the institutions, it seems only reasonable that the person called upon to perform this service would have a considerable degree of experience with the set of courses in question. Care should be taken, however, that such requirements are only brought into consideration when clearly necessary, for to have requisites for performing every kind of activity would have the harmful result of barring many devoted and eager friends from contributing to the unfoldment of the Five Year Plan and, ultimately, the advancement of the Faith.^[34]

The institutions also had to exercise the ability to help the friends to avoid creating false dichotomies on the basis of misunderstandings about the global Plans and to recognize that deepening and human resource development should not be held in opposition to each other:

National winter and summer schools, as well as deepening classes at the local level, are an integral aspect of community life in which the friends come together to deepen their knowledge of the Faith. Institutes were created as an instrument to develop the human resources necessary for the expansion and consolidation of the Faith. These two elements are complementary, and benefit from each other as they both flourish.^[35]

For local communities, the effects of training institutes have been significant as well. The acts of service treated in the main sequence of the Ruhi Institute courses are intended to set in motion a process that will lead to the sound development of local communities or, as envisioned in the Five Year Plan, of clusters. A plan of growth for the cluster is, in some sense, embedded in the sequence of courses, as described in the passage below:

The training institute is intended to endow a certain percentage of the friends in a community with the spiritual insights, knowledge, and skills and abilities necessary to perform the various tasks that accelerated expansion and consolidation of the Faith demands. Through the deployment of such believers in the field of service, then, needs of the kind you have identified can gradually be met. In the sequence of courses adopted by your institute, for instance, those who have completed the first course often go on to initiate devotional meetings in their localities, an act of service that in many places constitutes the beginnings of a sustainable pattern of community life. This pattern is strengthened as participants in the courses gain the capacity to deepen their fellow believers in the fundamentals of the Faith through a program of home visits and to conduct classes for the spiritual education of children. As such efforts to deepen the generality of the believers and educate their children advance, the level of their participation in essential aspects of Bahá’í community life, for example, the Nineteen Day Feast and Holy Day observances, likewise increases.^[36]

Communities, of course, are the collective expression of the individuals who compose them and who strive to promote their development. Ultimately, then, the purpose of the training institute is to build the capacity of individuals to meet the many needs of growing, vibrant communities. The content and order of the courses of the Ruhi Institute are based on a series of acts of service, the practice of which seeks to enhance such capacity. It views this process of capacity building in terms of “walking a path of service.” On such a path the friends are assisted first in accomplishing relatively simple tasks and then in performing more complex and demanding acts of service. This is the nature of capacity building. Each is accompanied by another as he learns to walk the path on his own. “One of the most noteworthy outcomes of the institute courses,” the Universal House of Justice has recently noted, “is the emergence of an ever-increasing number of tutors who, having themselves studied the courses and struggled to walk a path of service, engage others in the study of the sequence, instilling in them the same desire to arise and serve.”^[37] “Arise, then,” it has urged, “to engage more and more trusted members of your families, friends, neighbors and coworkers in the sequence of courses and assist them to walk the path of service so that a sizeable expansion of the Bahá’í community is hastened and sustained.”^[38]