Children’s class participants visit neighbourhood seniors in shared learning experience

A small neighbourhood children’s class in Melville, Perth is witnessing how visiting the homes of seniors in their community not only enriches their spiritual and social development, but shares joy with those being visited as well. 

The class, currently made up of only two children, started brainstorming a service project they could undertake in the middle of last year. Their teacher and one of the grandparents introduced the idea of visiting the homes of some of the community’s more elderly members. 

“They decided to start visiting seniors in their local community who had recently been to hospital, were new to the community or just agreed to have visitors,” says one parent.

Baha’i social action efforts seek to promote the social and material well-being of people of all walks of life, whatever their beliefs or background. Such efforts are motivated by the desire to serve humanity and contribute to constructive social change and are often initiated as a by-product of participation in Baha’i community-building activities such as children’s classes, junior youth groups or study circles.

Making up special cards and baking cupcakes, the children prepared themselves for the visits where they then recited prayers learned from their children’s classes and shared stories of the Manifestations of God and the central figures from the Baha’i Faith from the Ruhi children’s class Grade 3 curriculum. This sharing of knowledge helped to “consolidate their learning”.

The visits also enabled the children to learn more about the hobbies of those they were visiting, their families and grandchildren, and listen to stories of their own years serving the community. 

“They became more confident in sharing stories from the children’s classes curriculum and learned about the lives of other members of our community that they did not know.” 

“Some ten seniors have been visited to date and there are thoughts to start visiting families of with new babies in the community next although they would love to keep visiting seniors who are happy to have them too.”