Training Institute

Consider, for example, the multiplication of children's classes. ... The regional institutes are charged with responsibility for the implementation and management of the classes, and they require a wide degree of latitude to train the teachers, deploy resources and collaborate with Local Spiritual Assemblies.

Crucial to the future success of the institute will be the freedom of movement and action that it enjoys. The institute is, of course, an agency functioning under your aegis, and ultimately matters related to its operation rest with you. However, at this point in the growth of the Faith, the mandate of the institute is fairly clear-cut: A sequence of courses has been adopted as the national program for the development of human resources. It is the job of the institute, then, to help a steadily increasing number of youth and adults advance through that sequence and to carry out the concomitant task of organizing and maintaining classes for junior youth and children. There is little need for lengthy and frequent consultations to set direction and devise and rethink fundamental plans. Now is the time for action, and the central participants driving the institute process should be granted the latitude required to perform their functions effectively. Specifically, the national coordinator should be invested with enough authority to ensure that the basic purpose of the institute to raise up active supporters of the Faith is fulfilled.

Each Regional Training Institute is operated by a board of directors responsible for governing the affairs of the Institute and guiding its activities. The board is appointed by the National Spiritual Assembly in consultation with the Continental Board of Counselors and the Regional Bahá’í Council. Each Institute board appoints Regional Institute coordinators, who are responsible for coordinating and supporting the work of the Cluster Institute coordinators (CIC) in their region. Cluster Institute coordinators work in their respective clusters as facilitators of the institute process, ensuring that local tutors have what they need to increase and grow study circles.

It [the training institute] strives to engage the individual in an educational process in which virtuous conduct and self-discipline are developed in the context of service, fostering a coherent and joyful pattern of life that weaves together study, worship, teaching, community building and, in general, involvement in other processes that seek to transform society. At the heart of the educational process is contact with the Word of God, whose power sustains every individual’s attempts to purify his or her heart and to walk a path of service with “the feet of detachment”.

Regional Training Institutes (RTIs), agencies established by the National Spiritual Assembly to serve specific geographic areas, are overseen by Regional Bahá’í Councils on behalf of the National Assembly.

The role of Regional Training Institutes is to assist in training the human resources in its area to ready them for mobilization by Assemblies to meet the goals of teaching plans and to serve the needs of the community.