Dear Friends,
The Bahá'í Council is pleased to share the Regional Reflections newsletter for cycle 20. You can download it by clicking the link below.
Mbantua Cluster in Central Australia has been applying the key guidance and the strategies of the Five Year Plan, with astonishing results. Given its location and circumstances, we thought it would be fascinating to see what lessons we can learn, so we spoke to Sheida Navidi, Secretary of the Area Teaching Committee, and Moira Andrews, cluster main sequence coordinator.
What is different about your cluster from other clusters?
Mbantua cluster lies on Arrernte land and is commonly known in English as Alice Springs. The town is situated roughly in Australia’s geographic centre, it is the third largest town in the Northern Territory with a population of around 27,000 people. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians make up 18% of the total population. The Aboriginal population speak different language including Warlpiri, Arrernte Pitjantjara or Pintupi/Luritja, and there are minorities that speak languages from all over the world. Alice Springs has a dry desert climate which includes very hot summers and short cold winters.
Nowadays, there are many ethnicities and cultures that exist together in Alice Springs that often clash but also have together created a collective culture and influenced the way of life in the town. There is an atmosphere that is welcoming despite the harshness.
What has been the recent success leading to reaching the 3rd Milestone?
One thing in particular has been the engagement of a whole neighbourhood of the cluster in Baha’i core activities that has been a major source of learning. The process of community-building and community engagement has developed to the extent that the friends, as they are learning about saturation, are understanding the influence of social action at the scale of a whole neighbourhood. There are many pockets within the cluster in which the friends are learning about these processes and concepts. And I think especially that the emergence of learning as a mode of functioning allows these ideas and learnings in one neighbourhood to be spread to the other neighbourhoods and contributes to collective growth.
What do you mean by “learning about saturation” and “action at the scale of a whole neighbourhood” – it sounds like you are thinking big!
We are told by the Universal House of Justice to read the realities of an area — one of the realities of Mbantua is the community living areas, or town camps. There are about 20 such areas around Alice Springs, each forming a community typically of one Aboriginal language area. What we have found is that when the local residents, particularly the elders, are driving the process, it is possible to saturate the entire neighbourhood with Bahá'í events – we have already one example, Hidden Valley, where individuals in every single household are participating in core activities in the neighbourhood. We have other areas working towards this as well.
That’s exciting – But you can’t achieve that level of success without a strong foundation – what other contributing factors come to mind?
Another aspect is the significant advance of the Junior Youth program, especially as the perspective has shifted away from viewing youth of this age group as troublesome and rebellious, rather now there is the understanding that they contain great capacity. There has been a major shift in the Mbantua cluster as the concept of capacity-building is now consciously prevalent in the minds of the friends… One contributing factor that has influenced this change is the discussions around Social Action that have been ongoing in the whole cluster. Especially amongst the Hidden Valley friends to the extent that participation in the junior youth activities is valued as highly as school education.
Institute camps are held each cycle, with friends progressing through the sequence of courses from cycle to cycle. This process has contributed to elevating the nature of conversations friends are having with each other and with other community members. These institute camps also helped with increasing the number of tutors within the cluster in a systematic manner.
Also, whenever there is a plan or campaign, the cluster agencies and their assistants are always there to help and support, there is a genuine friendship between the friends that helps and motivates us to overcome the obstacles and move forward.
This Hidden Valley community sounds like a special case – what are the stats?
Statistics:
Size of nucleus in Hidden Valley has grown from 3 to 20 over the last year
11 tutors
4 youth experienced as animators
4 BCC teachers
Total core activities in HV is 19
Core activities in whole cluster – 50 with 24 being devotionals
What lessons have you learned along the way?
One thing that comes to mind is the studying of the Ruhi books, including the higher sequence. In particular, as a cluster we are understanding that studying these books in sequence is important for building the capacity of individuals so they can contribute to the development of the community. The higher books (8-10) are also understood to be important for the implementation of the plan and understanding the covenant, e.g. concepts of accompaniment, consultation, reading reality, etc.
This success doesn’t just happen overnight – we have had to patiently adhere to a process-oriented approach. Often the Bahá'í community talks about process, but only focuses on organising the next event. We have focused our efforts on the process over the years and I think that this has resulted in our cluster’s significant advancement in the last year, and it has fundamentally shaped our character.
Another learning is the mindset being developed that everything we are doing in the cluster, and every activity we are undertaking, is all part of a process that everyone can feel they can contribute towards regardless of the size of their contribution. And this process has been developing and coming into fruition through many cycles of crisis and victory. It is continually advancing everyday… so much so that we are always reading the reality of the cluster and acting in accordance with our current and changing understanding of that reality.
What, if anything, have you done differently that has led to the success?
There have been many continuing changes, but one pivotal moment in the development of the institutional structure was the Cluster Agency meeting we had at the beginning of January 2020. As a group we sat down and discussed “How should we organise ourselves so that we can support the friends in Mbantua?” One of the outcomes of this meeting was to study Book 10 Unit 3 as an agency. I think both of these things have allowed the coordinators and the Area Teaching Committee to advance their understanding of how they function in the cluster and build the relationships between other agencies so that we collaborate more effectively… this has furthered our institutional capacity to think in terms of systems and processes. Likewise, we haven’t enforced hard boundaries. For example, where the Aboriginal families cross into surrounding cluster areas, we have encouraged the sharing of resources to foster lines of collaboration and support where it is most natural.
The success has come as part of an organic process fed from within. Individuals are sustaining the activities because it has become a natural part of life — the benefits of the camps are obvious to the entire community. What started with two Aboriginal Elders and one youth, working together is now self-sustaining. Success is yielding success.
We have adopted a common purpose — it is a collective process that every one of us can contribute towards. Understanding our common purpose has made it easier resolve arguments amongst each other. We say, “we are learning”, not “we have learned” — this keeps us always looking to the future, maintaining a humble posture of learning, and makes us feel accountable to Bahá'u'lláh.
Editor's comments: It was wonderful to hear the progress that has been made in Central Australia Following the instructions of the Universal House of Justice, thinking strategically, and focusing on the realities and needs of the local area, has resulted in neighbourhood saturation. It is little wonder then that Mbantua has achieved the Third Milestone.