Junior Youth Empowerment Program

Community Building and Community Service

Worldwide (188 countries), junior youth are participating in an endeavour that strives to give them a voice in today’s society. These junior youth groups are enhancing their power of expression, sharpening their spiritual perception and allowing them to analyse the constructive and destructive forces of society.

The JYSEP is a Baha'i inspired initiative that addresses the role of junior youth in the process of community development. The three areas of foci of the program are character development, leadership development and service to the community.

Worldwide, junior youth are participating in an endeavor that strives to give them a voice in today’s society. These junior youth groups are enhancing their power of expression, sharpening their spiritual perception and allowing them to analyze the constructive and destructive forces of society.

Falling between the ages of 12 and 15 and representing a transition from childhood to youth, young adolescents—referred to as “junior youth”—experience rapid physical, intellectual, and emotional changes. Their spiritual powers expand. A new level of awareness fosters in them an increased interest in profound questions and in their talents and abilities. During this short and critical three-year period, ideas about the individual and society that may very well shape the rest of their lives are formed. However, delight at these new powers is often combined with feelings of worry, discomfort, and doubt that may produce contradictions in behavior. Directing their new abilities towards selfless service to humanity is therefore needed at this age.

Some views of junior youth do not cast this period of life in a positive light. Popular views, for instance, regard this age as full of confusion and crises. Such thoughts foster conditions in which undesirable patterns of behavior are spread. A proper understanding of this age is that of selfless young people with “an acute sense of justice, eagerness to learn about the universe and a desire to contribute to the construction of a better world”. The negative traits they sometimes show are certainly not intrinsic to this stage in human life.

The group members meet together weekly where they study character development themes, develop the power of expression, discuss difficult issues with peers, create art, play cooperative games, engage in healthy recreation and plan & carry out service projects. The groups are normally led by students at North Carolina Central University (they earn community service hours).

1. The curriculum: it constitutes a story with certain moral concepts, on which the junior youth consult. This helps them in developing the ability to express themselves and their thoughts. The materials have been developed, piloted and adopted in junior youth groups around the globe. Their relevance goes beyond cultural or religious boundaries, and they seek to help junior youth develop an intellectual and spiritual framework with which to approach their path in life.

2. Service: the junior youth discuss and decide on service activities as a group. Acts of service that the junior youth perform for their neighborhood will depend on the needs of their local community. Examples of these service activities are the following: cleaning the local park, planting trees and flowers, helping out in an orphanage, visiting the elderly and the ill…etc.

3. Extra-curricular activities: different forms of arts and crafts, sports and recreational and educational trips are an integral part of the junior youth group.