Academic Tutoring
For more than a decade, the promotion of literacy amongst adolescents has been a core strategy of community development initiatives across the North Central region of North Carolina. Our sister program, the junior youth spiritual empowerment program, seeks to endow young people between the ages of 12 and 15 with the capabilities needed to effectively use “the word” as an instrument of their own transformation and the transformation of their society. The program is intended for young people of all religious backgrounds or none, whose engagement with Bahá’í-inspired themes enable them to contribute more effectively to the progress of their communities, their nations, and the world. The program seeks to equip young people with the words and ways of thinking that will enable them to engage in meaningful social action as they grow.
Experiences in the field of literacy amply demonstrate that to successfully impart the various skills related to the power of expression—reading, writing, speech—program content must be rich and meaningful. Empty passages, such as “The dog walks on the road,” bring little results. Students, whether adults or youth, respond best when themes and words have relevance to their lives and elicit their participation in analyzing society and contributing to its betterment. The content explored in such a program can go far in raising consciousness, awakening and strengthening the will to take charge of one’s own development and contribute to the progress of the community. The language we use to describe ourselves and our communities has a profound effect on our sense of identity. Consequently, the materials used strive to incorporate spiritual and moral themes that promote such processes of transformation.
The response to these initial efforts to develop powers of expression amongst middle school and high school aged youth has been encouraging. Not only have young people and their families come together voluntarily on a weekly basis for several years to study the core texts of the curriculum, many individuals and families have gone above and beyond to create reading circles for children, made public speeches for their communities, written poetry, skits and films, facilitated story writing workshops, and met together for regular academic support, all as organic outgrowths of the junior youth spiritual empowerment program.