From the 8th – 14th August in the far away village of Banneux, Belgium, I had the immense honour of representing Northern Ireland at an incredible conference named “Teaching in Our Social Circles” arranged by the Board of Counsellors for Europe.. Nineteen youth from France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and the UK converged on Banneux, a place of pilgrimage for Christians, to share our experiences of teaching amongst our friends at university and to leave with added zeal and fervour to continue doing so.
The programme was exceptional. It was prepared in collaboration with the Counsellors of the International Teaching Centre and explored themes of special interest to people in our peer group such as peace, the oneness of humanity, justice, the equality of women and men, and human rights. In small groups, we swapped experiences of tutoring, inviting friends to study circles and nurturing them to join the Faith. We thoroughly examined our methods of teaching and conveying information about our Faith, many of us realizing that we can often over-burden enquirers with concepts which, although familiar to us as Bahá'ís, can be scary to and misunderstood by others. In an attempt to solve this problem, we spent time thinking as our friends think so that hopefully we can teach them in a way that will they will respond to positively .
We were especially fortunate to have with us Counsellor Firouzeh Moghbel from France who set the tone of the conference on the first morning, calling to mind the divine civilization that our efforts will help establish. It was indeed a blessing to have taken part in such a conference in the company of youth of astounding strength and character: the spirit of joy and fellowship amongst the small band of us was out of the ordinary. Not even the invasion of a swarm of killer wasps [yes really!] in our meeting rooms was capable of deterring us from our purpose. Art, in the form of shadow theatre, mandalas, drama, and Chinese puppetry infused our evenings and our breaks were filled with sharing of games and songs from study circles.
We each had the chance to speak about our own clusters and I was especially proud to share news of our intensive institute campaign, the George Townsend Bahá'í School, Cypher Dance Workshop, Tranquillity Evenings and multitude of study circles, children’s classes and devotionals in my cluster ; Charles Dunning. We promised to keep the clusters of one another in our prayers so hopefully this conference will reap positive rewards for the Charles Dunning Cluster and the whole of Northern Ireland.
EK
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