Summer Schools 2026–27: Community as a source of hope

As preparations begin for Bahá’í Summer Schools across Aotearoa this summer, a common theme will connect gatherings taking place around the country: the community as a potent source of hope in the world around us.

Building on last year’s Summer School focus on the family, the National Spiritual Assembly has invited this year’s host Local Spiritual Assemblies and their respective organising teams to provide their summer school programmes with opportunities for participants to explore the nature of community and, in particular, the capacity of communities to increasingly take ownership of their own spiritual and material development.

At the heart of this theme is a passage from the Universal House of Justice’s message of 31 December 2025 to the Conference of the Continental Boards of Counsellors:

“There is a rise, too, in various collaborative arrangements, which are doing much to build or reshape a shared social identity and collective purpose. These arrangements include the groups of families and households we mentioned in 2021 and also other natural groupings such as women or youth, farmers or educators, and animators or children’s class teachers, often with a supportive network of friends. Groups of this kind set about organizing their own efforts to improve some aspect of the life of the community, and they promote broader participation in those efforts. In other words, they are helping the growth and development of the community to become self-perpetuating, and they are doing so without the need for new layers of administrative structure. This is consequential.”

The House of Justice goes on to describe the significance of this development:

“It demonstrates the emerging capacity of the community to be a visible protagonist in the Plan. Buttressed by the full confidence and loving guidance of the institutions, the community is steering the trajectory of its own development with creativity and ingenuity, and exploring how the principles contained in Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation can be applied to the issues that confront it within its immediate reality.”

This vision of community provides rich ground for exploration during the Summer Schools. What does it look like for a community to become a protagonist in its own development? How can relationships of love, trust and mutual support strengthen a shared sense of purpose? And how can people of different ages, backgrounds and capacities learn to work together in ways that bring hope not only to themselves, but to those around them?

Summer Schools around Aotearoa

The Spiritual Assemblies of Whangārei, Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch will host Summer Schools this year, with Dunedin collaborating with Christchurch. A Kura Raumati (summer school held in a Māori cultural context) will also be held in Rotorua.

While the overarching theme of community provides a common thread, each organising team is developing its own programme and expression of the theme, drawing particularly on the guidance of the Universal House of Justice. This will allow each Summer School to explore these ideas in ways that speak to the circumstances, experiences and possibilities of the communities it serves.

Summer Schools provide wonderful opportunities for people to deepen their understanding of the teachings through discussion and through the experience of close and unified community life, learning through study and through living, serving and associating together in close fellowship.

Further information about each of the 2026–27 Summer Schools, including dates, venues, programmes and registration details, will be shared on the Summer School website (linked here) as arrangements are confirmed, and as updates to information comes in over the coming weeks.