The organised youth activity in the past years has been… a bit slim, but that all is going to change because of a new Youth Facilitation Team appointed by the Bahá’í Council. Maryam Roohipour and Natasha Robinson are now here to help make the Youth community of Northern Ireland even better. With your enthusiasm, help and advice it will rock! Communication between the youth will also get better because of the Youth Page that hopes to be a regular feature in Communiqué. This page will let you know what events are coming up, and what other Bahá’í youth have been doing. Each month this page could have anything from a poem to a teaching experience you encountered, maybe feedback on a Bahá’í event you were at, or information about youth conferences. No matter what, it will be about you and will reflect the youth community in Northern Ireland.
Our plan is to have at least four youth events a year, which will be mostly during holidays and outside of exam time. These could be anything from a ten minute seminar on chastity to a weekend retreat or even a chocolate party! We hope to leave the format of them largely up to you guys. Also to ensure that events are accessible to everyone we would like to hold these all over Northern Ireland and so are looking for people to help organise them hint hint). Another idea was to get Fun Fridays back on the road. These were started by Lights of Unity and basically involves the youth meeting up at Hackney House on Friday evenings and playing games, talking about the faith and having fun!
Please do not be afraid if you (singular or plural!) would like to organise your own youth event. We will give you all the help and support that you need, but YOU need to come up with the ideas. Please don't hesitate to get in touch. We can help you if we know what you want. We recently sent out questionnaires to every youth in the Northern Ireland. These questionnaires are to help us make youth events interesting and entertaining but also to include the things you like. Unfortunately many people didn’t receive these, if you didn’t or you have lost yours please email Maryam and she will send it to you, also if you still have your questionnaire please send it back!
If nothing else please send us your email address so that we can get in touch with you! Remember ‘Youth can move the world’
With much love, Maryamand Natasha The Youth Facilitation Team of Northern Ireland.
Going on pilgrimage I expected a lot of things, but something I definitely hadn’t thought about was how epic Haifa is. It’s like being in an old film; everything you do is completely knocked down and set to cross its legs in a meditative position.Pilgrimage is a great, fun and important part in the deepening of any Bahá’í; it really helps put things in a sort of perspective. I mean seeing the places Bahá’u’lláh lived and it all really helps you relate to who he was and what being a Bahá’í is all about. Praying at the shrines is better than anything, and that’s that. The Universal House of Justice is so kind and caring, I mean everything is taken care of and you feel so safe knowing that it is just there so close and watching that everyone is happy and comfortable.
There is no particular feeling of self in Haifa; you simply feel a part of a larger community, and not so much a community of people, but a community of spirituality and all sorts of conformation.
But I must give a piece of advice to anyone who has not been on pilgrimage yet. Do not go to the holy land expecting anything at all, because it will do for you what it will do for you, and you can’t change that however much you want to. And also never try to really touch base with anyone, I think it’s better to get to know yourself a little bit more in a tranquil mind, than to try and impress anyone with how spiritual you think you have suddenly become. I understand now that everything is in need of constant support, and because I’m a youth (teenager) I know I can do everything! So perhaps this bogus illusion of capability can be much used to conquer the fear that is sometimes so close; to talking about the faith and truthful openness to people you know and maybe some people you don’t know.
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