We invite attendees to enter and explore key concepts in one of our courses from our graduate-level certificate program through an immersive process. Attendees freely walk through a museum style gallery where they engage with four interactive stations. Participants explore public discourse as a strategy for change, reading our reality, underlying material assumptions, and the need for being in a mode of learning. The gallery walk-through concludes with a 15-minute Q&A reflection. This process highlights the learning gained by the Wilmette Institute to promote the current global Plan through its Social Transformation Certificate program.
Social capital is posited as a critical resource within the "social commons," with a role in fostering trust, cooperation, and societal resilience. Drawing from the Bahá'í Faith's principles of unity and the oneness of humankind, it highlights how Bahá'í community-building efforts—through transformation of individuals, communities, and institutions—can regenerate social capital. The Bahá'í framework offers unique insights into restoring trust and cohesion by addressing systemic inequities and promoting collective well-being. Through the lens of Social Affinity Flow Theory (SAFT), this talk connects spiritual and material dimensions of social capital to sustainable development and governance.
Intentional self-reflection is critical to the success of community building. We will share and engage in the practice of PhotoSophia (light and wisdom) as sacred long-looking and arts-grounded exploration. Bahá’u’llah writes “true loss is for him whose days have been spent in utter ignorance of his self.” In what ways does our ignorance become a serious obstacle to overcoming our inherent racism and sexism in community building efforts? PhotoSophia has been used around the world with adults, youth and children to “bring thyself to account each day”, helping us embrace vulnerability and authentic unity, in a humble posture of learning.
The spiritual technology, consultation, stands alongside ubuntu and other indigenous circle methods that mute competition, dominance and hierarchy while fostering just, collective decisionmaking. Welcomed by comrades in Baltimore’s Black community, at work and in the field of service, it's one of the last tools Baha’is tend to share outwardly. After briefly reviewing key elements aligned between Bahá'í Writings, indigenous practices, some practical adaptations from John Kolstoe’s “Developing Genius” and the facilitators' work, we’ll collectively create guidelines to share for introducing consultation in our circles of action using interactive and computer assisted social research tools.
This panel explores the central questions of ‘what is discourse and what is it for?’ and continues this exploration by asking what intellectual norms serve as obstacles to realizing oneness and unity through public discourse and how can discourse contribute to societal transformation built on principles of oneness. Panelists will draw from experiences participating in discourses in four diverse fields (natural science, global health, art, and education), each with unique and shared historical patterns of thought, expectations pertaining to social change, and norms of communication. Participants will reflect on their own journeys in public discourse through interdisciplinary breakout groups.
As a family and addictions doctor with 30 years of experience working in Alberta, I would like to share experiences of helping people improve their health through consultation with patients, and creating the environment where a healing community can form amongst clinic patients and beyond. This presentation will include sharing by a member of an oft-ignored minority, and how the lack of consultation about health lead to a tragedy, and the moving beyond this to create better health for all.
Joan Young proposes to look at her rekindling of friendship with Indigenous Bahá’ís whom she first met in the 1970s — as well as her visits with their non-Indigenous friends — to collect life stories. She aims to demonstrate the profound value of friendship across the cultural divide and to connect these relationships to the current dialogue around Truth and Reconciliation. She contends that building "common memory," a term used by Indigenous leader, Georges Erasmus, is essential in the building of community. Participants will be inspired to write the unique histories which they have access to.
