The achievements of the Plan, simply in numerical terms,
quickly eclipsed those of all the Plans that had preceded it since 1996. At the
start of this Plan, the capacity existed for conducting just over 100,000 core
activities at a given time, a capacity that was the fruit of twenty years of
common endeavour. Now, 300,000 core activities are being sustained at once.
Participation in those activities has risen above two million, which is also
close to a threefold increase. There are 329 national and regional training
institutes in operation, and their capacity is evidenced by the fact that
three-quarters of a million people have been enabled to complete at least one
book of the sequence; overall, the number of courses completed by individuals
is now also two million—a rise of well over a third in five years.
The increased intensity with which programmes of growth
around the world are being pursued tells an impressive story of its own. In
this five-year span, we had called for growth to be accelerated in every one of
the 5,000 clusters where it had begun. This imperative became the impetus for
earnest endeavour throughout the world. As a result, the number of intensive
programmes of growth more than doubled and now stands at approximately 4,000.
Difficulties involved in opening up new villages and neighbourhoods to the
Faith in the midst of a global health crisis, or expanding activities that were
at an early stage when the pandemic began, prevented an even higher total from
being reached during the Plan’s final year. However, there is more to tell than
this. At the outset of the Plan, we had expressed the hope that the number of
clusters where the friends had passed the third milestone along a continuum of
growth, as a consequence of learning how to welcome large numbers into the
embrace of their activities, would grow by hundreds more. That total then stood
at around 200, spread across some 40 countries. Five years on, this number has
risen to an astonishing 1,000 in nearly 100 countries—a quarter of all the
intensive programmes of growth in the world and an achievement far surpassing
our expectations. And yet even these figures do not reveal the loftiest heights
to which the community has soared. There are over 30 clusters where the number
of core activities being sustained exceeds 1,000; in places, the total is several
thousand, involving the participation of more than 20,000 people in a single
cluster. A growing number of Local Spiritual Assemblies now oversee the
unfoldment of educational programmes that cater to practically all the children
and junior youth in a village; the same reality is beginning to emerge within a
few urban neighbourhoods. Engagement with the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh has, in
notable instances, transcended individuals, families and extended kinships—what
is being witnessed is the movement of populations towards a common centre. At
times, age-old hostilities between opposing groups are being left behind, and
certain social structures and dynamics are being transformed in the light of
the divine teachings.
- The Universal House of Justice (Ridvan 2021 message; ‘Messages
from the Universal House of Justice 2001-2022’)