Volunteer with children & youth · Volunteer experience
The Greater Boston Baha’i Community offers three ways in which you can help children, junior youth and youth become active, contributing members of their neighborhoods. These programs empower young people to become protagonists in contributing to a vibrant, peaceful society through lessons, actions and service.
The Program’s Aims
The Baha'i writings describe humans as having unlimited potential and untapped capacities, both material and spiritual. These moral and spiritual education activities assist young people to bring forth these qualities in service, helping them become active contributors to a more unified, collaborative world characterized by justice, friendship and mutual support. This is learning in action for all participants.
These programs are not simply educational courses, but part of a broader process of community building in which children, junior youth, youth, and adults learn to serve together and contribute to the spiritual and material progress of their communities.
The efforts of volunteers are key to assist young people to become protagonists of change in their neighborhoods.
How you can serve
Three distinct kinds of volunteering, each with its own training and rhythm. Most people gravitate to one of these paths.
Ages 4–11
Lead a small class of children through a virtue-based weekly curriculum. You'll work from prepared lesson plans (a story, an art project, songs, a cooperative game) and learn to facilitate, not improvise. Responding to each child's needs.
Openings nowAges 11–14
Accompany a small group of junior youth through a structured program that builds capacity to analyze the forces shaping their world. You're not a youth pastor or a counselor. You're a slightly-older friend who facilitates conversation and service projects rooted in the group's own neighborhood.
Openings nowAges 15+
Older youth often serve as junior youth animators themselves, support children's classes as assistants, or take on neighborhood service projects that emerge from the broader community. Bahá'u'lláh wrote that those who arise to serve in the prime of their youth bring about a grace greater than the creation of the heavens and the earth.
OngoingHow you'll be prepared
No one starts teaching alone. The Ruhi Institute is a sequence of study materials developed over forty years that prepares anyone, with or without a religious background, to do this work well. The training is free, conversational, and built around small-group study rather than lectures.
Children's class teachers train through Ruhi Book 3 (about 30 hours of study, spread over weeks). Junior youth animators train through Book 5. Both books cover both the practical methodology and the underlying view of human nature that animates the program. Most people find the training itself one of the more meaningful parts of the year.
A 20-minute call with a member of the Boston community to talk through which age band fits you, your schedule, and what you're hoping to get out of the experience.
Sit in on an existing class or junior youth group to see what the role actually looks like. No commitment required after this step.
Join the next training cohort and work through Book 3 (children's classes) or Book 5 (junior youth) in a small group of others who are also preparing to serve.
Once you've completed the training, you'll start by assisting an experienced teacher or animator for several sessions before taking on a class or group of your own.
Monthly gatherings of Boston teachers and animators to discuss what's working, what's hard, and what each group needs next.
Why spiritual education matters
The Baha'i view is that children's character is formed in the early years, and that what's offered to them in that window shapes the rest of their lives. 'Abdu'l-Bahá addressed children's teachers with striking language: 'Thou hast arisen to perform a service which would justly entitle thee to vaunt thyself over all the teachers on earth. For the teachers of this world make use of human education to develop the powers, whether spiritual or material, of humankind, whilst thou art training these young plants in the gardens of God.'
For ages 11–14, the program goes further than moral instruction. It gives junior youth the conceptual tools to analyze the constructive and destructive forces operating in society, and to recognize the influence those forces exert on their own thoughts and actions. The Universal House of Justice has called this age group a vast reservoir of energy and talent for the advancement of spiritual and material civilization. Most volunteer programs treat eleven-to-fourteen-year-olds as a behavior problem. This one treats them as collaborators.
Many of the people who serve as teachers and animators report being changed as much as the children they serve. The training itself reshapes how they see young people, how they think about education, and how they understand their own role in the neighborhood. It's a year that often becomes the experience people reference most often in later interviews for medical school, education programs, or social work.
Apply to volunteer
Common questions
Yes. We document hours, write reference letters after a semester of consistent involvement, and many of our teachers and animators carry this experience into medical, education, or social work training. What they tend to say later is that this is the experience they reference most often in interviews, not because it's an impressive resume line, but because it's where they learned to actually see children and adolescents as capable. That kind of vision is rare and durable, and it transfers to whatever you do next.
No to both. Most of our volunteers are college students, recent graduates, or career-changers with no formal teaching experience. The training prepares you. You also don't need to be Baha'i. The curriculum is non-denominational, and most of the families in our Boston programs aren't Baha'i either.
For children's class teachers: 90 minutes of class per week, plus about 30 minutes of prep, for a semester minimum (ideally a full school year). For junior youth animators: roughly 90 minutes per week with the group, plus prep, with a strong preference for a full-year commitment because the relationships take longer to build. Training adds about 30 hours up front, typically spread over six to eight weeks in a small group.
The Ruhi Institute training is conversational, not lecture-based. You'll work through a study book in a small group of 3 to 8 people, meeting weekly for about two hours. The book covers both the methodology (how to plan a lesson, how to handle group dynamics, how the curriculum is structured) and the underlying view of children and adolescents that the program is built on. Most people find the training itself one of the more meaningful parts of the year.
Yes. After a semester of consistent involvement, you can request a letter from the community coordinator covering your role, the hours, the skills you developed, and the impact you had. Many of our former volunteers have used these letters successfully in applications to medical school, graduate programs, and teaching certification programs.
Yes. A standard Massachusetts CORI background check is required for anyone working with children or junior youth in our programs. The community covers the cost; you don't pay anything. The check is straightforward for most applicants and is renewed periodically.
A junior youth group is a small group of seven to twelve young people ages 11–14, meeting weekly with one or two animators (usually older youth or young adults). The group works through a structured set of materials that combine discussion, arts, service projects, and reflection on the forces shaping their lives. It is not a religious youth group. There is no preaching, no recruitment, and most participants are not Baha'i. The goal is to help adolescents develop their own moral perception and capacity for service, not to deliver doctrine. The teen empowerment program page has more on what this looks like in practice.
Yes. We often pair volunteers, and some classes are co-taught by two teachers. Student organizations from BU, BC, Northeastern, Harvard, MIT, Tufts, and other Boston-area schools have placed groups of volunteers with us before. If you're coordinating for a group, mention it in the form and we'll figure out the right placements together.
A full year is ideal because the children and junior youth benefit most from the same consistent adult across the year. A real semester (16 weeks of weekly presence) is acceptable and useful. Anything shorter than a semester tends to hurt the group more than it helps, so we'd ask you to wait until you can make a meaningful commitment.
Get started
Tell us which neighborhood you live in, what age band interests you, and roughly when you'd be available. A real person will follow up within a few days to talk through fit and next steps. There's no commitment from this first conversation.
A real person will follow up within a few days.