Releasing the Powers of Junior Youth Unit 1 PRE-PUBLICATION EDITION MATERIAL IN DEVELOPMENT VERSION VI.B 7 April 2007 Ruhi Institute Copyright ©2006 by the Ruhi Foundation, Colombia All rights reserved. Palabra Publications 7369 Westport Place West Palm Beach, Florida 33413 U.S.A. 1-561-697-9823 1-561-697-9815 (fax)
[email protected] www.palabrapublications.com The Ruhi Institute is an educational institution functioning under the aegis of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Colombia. Its purpose is to develop human resources dedicated to the spiritual, social and cultural progress of the Colombian people. Over the decades its materials have increasingly been used by national Bahá’í communities everywhere. The approach to curriculum development followed by the Ruhi Institute is not the traditional one of design, field-testing and evaluation, carried out in a linear fashion. The first step in writing any set of materials is taken, rather, when an experience is created at the grassroots in performing some act of service in response to the demands of expansion and consolidation. Materials emerge out of this experience and become an expression of it. They are, on the one hand, a record of the learning that occurs in applying the Writings in a particular area of service and, on the other, an instrument for the systematization of that learning. The approach has been described in the following terms in the small volume Learning About Growth: Once an educational need is identified, a small group of people, working at the grassroots, consult among themselves, develop a set of ideas for educational activities, and put them into practice.