Stranmillis University College is one of the principal teacher training colleges in Northern Ireland. This year, for the first time, it introduced a module on the Bahá'í Faith into the curriculum for third year students. The module is intended to give the students a basic appreciation of the Faith. In addition to the religious studies module, students also take part in a joint programme with St Mary’s teacher training college that includes a direct input from a Bahá'í to the students highlighting experiences of Bahá'í pupils in schools. Later this year Stranmillis will publish course materials to assist teachers who wish to include teaching about non-Christian religions. The course materials include a substantial section on the Bahá'í Faith.
Although the statutory core curriculum for religious education is still very inadequate, the development of resource materials and a module for students is very welcome progress.
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ON THE MOVE:
Andalib Gornall is studying dentistry at Manchester University, while Parisa Roohipour is studying at a School for the Arts in Boston. Nima Hedayati has moved back to Omagh.
Shirin Jamshidi one of our youth serving her year of service in the Australian temple in Sydney as a gardener e mails home her experience with the ferocious wild life to be found in the underbrush of the temple gardens.
“There was a slight drama this week. Let me explain. I will set the scene for you. Shirin, innocent and unsuspecting, is sitting in a flower bed weeding, when suddenly an animal shoots past her weed bucket. In venturing forth to see what it was she is confronted by staring eyes surrounded by green scales. She high tails it out of the area grabs another volunteer to sacrifice a hand to look into the bush and find out what the fearsomecreature is. Ready to confront a deadly and vicious predator that can kill with one look (pause foreffect) she then finds out much to the detriment ofher ego that it is actually a non-vicious, non-poisonous friendly average sized dragon lizard, of which there are two in the biology department inschool at home. Just to prove the fact that fright blinds even the bravest of people to the truth. So that was my drama I am telling you I could havebeen killed, but unfortunately not by any animal, more from the humiliation. Just keeping you informed of everything.”
The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Hungary has a Year of Service opportunity for youth to work among the Roma people, the country’s largest ethnic minority.
“The Bahá'í community has been involved in various socio economic projects for the benefit of this section of the population. One of the ways in which we can empower them and increase theiropportunities for employment or further education is to provide lessons in English. This is especially so in the case of the young Roma who are willingand excited to learn. Therefore if the youth from English speaking countries could devote some time to stay in Hungary and hold English classes it would go a long way to improve the standard of life for the Roma in general and for the Bahá'í communities in particular.”
Interested? Contact nsa@bahai.hu
An interesting and informative website about the new Edinburgh Centre project and the historic city’s links with the Faith can be found at www.bci.org/edinburgh/CentreIndex.htm
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