For Day 12 of our December Detox your Life Series, we visited a common New Year’s resolution: Giving back to the community, or volunteering. Many faiths have wonderful community-centric principles and today we had the opportunity to speak with a member of the Bahá’í Faith. One of the main goals of the Bahá’í Faith is to unite the world, and they do this effectively through social action and local community development.

We met with Tony, a local Bahá’í from Pleasanton, CA, and asked him how to develop an effective community program. Here’s what we learned:

Tip #1: Developing and giving back to your community starts from your home.

One approach to community development, is to consider offering your home as a “base” for the community activities that you plan for the neighborhood (the one you live in). When you plan your events, you don’t have to look far.

Tip #2: Forget spending money on fliers and advertisements — start building your community with your neighbors!

Together, you and your neighbors should develop a vision for what you’d like to do for the community and how far you’d like to impact. It could be as large as one block, or as small as one cul-de-sac.

Now, how would one choose how to give back? Tony suggests:

Tip #3: Look to your community to decide how to give back.

Each neighborhood has unique needs and opportunities for community development. Assuming that children, junior youth, youth, and adults exist in your neighborhood, it’s crucial that all are invited to the community development effort. Tony also points out that it’s important to build a community on spiritual principles ( such as truthfulness, love, harmony), as everyone involved will need to understand these spiritual dynamics in order to serve the community. Need help getting started?

Tip #4: Invite your neighbors over and get to know them.

Don’t forget to keep it simple. A lavish get-together with catering and decorations takes away from the purpose of your meeting. If this is the first time meeting your neighbors, take the opportunity to get to know them. Let them know that you’d like to give back to the community and that you’d love it if they would join you. Not only will you feel you are making strides towards your resolution, but you’re giving the chance to others as well, and you know how we feel about giving.

What if you need more structure?

Tip #5: Get help with the Ruhi Series.

Tony explains that structure is important when it comes to ongoing community development and that’s why the Ruhi series was developed. Ruhi books are a series of books that focus on community and personal development based on the principles and teaching of the Baha’i Faith – but it’s not just for Bahá’í’s. Ruhi books are used by many peoples, cultures, creeds and is offered in multiple languages. The books are structured in a way that encourage both personal learning, community discourse and practice. The key learnings are practiced by all involved and the goal is the betterment of the entire community. Ruhi books require community involvement and the end result is a unified, and invigorated neighborhood.

If you are interested in learning about Ruhi and how it can benefit your community, you can find more information here.