 I know this was talked about last night as well, but what an amazing time this is to be talking about engaged learning, community building, and our individual and collective agency. In San Francisco just over a week ago, youth who participated in one of the 114 conferences around the world came back to our community with a new and infectious sense of hope, energy, and commitment to service. And I'm sure many of you are feeling this in your communities as well. In our own ways, we're all trying to do, as the House of Justice says, to read our immediate realities, to analyze its possibilities, and to apply judiciously the methods and instruments of the five-year plan in this global effort to contribute to the betterment of the world and to promote the cause of him who is the ancient and sovereign Lord of all. In this most dynamic period of learning, the Universal House of Justice also reminds us that Bahá'u'lláh's revelation is vast. It calls for a profound change, not only at the level of individual, but also in the structure of society. Only as effort is made to draw on the insights of his revelation, to tap into the accumulating knowledge of the human race, to apply his teachings intelligently to the life of humanity, will the necessary learning occur and capacity be developed. That's a direct quote from the Universal House of Justice. Perhaps like many of you in my career within academic institutions, as a graduate student, as a faculty member, I have struggled to maintain a sense of synergy between this profound, inspired and dynamic learning community and the often withdrawn from reality and sterile environment of the academy. In my quiet resistance to knowledge regimes that favored objective and highly theorized knowledge over that generated through the lived experiences of everyday people, I came upon the concepts of participatory research, which I will refer to as PAR to make it easier, and popular education that seemed to provide me with an academic discourse and practice community that was also interested in questioning and addressing the nature and purpose of knowledge production. And in turn, insights from PAR, a long established approach to education and social change in many parts of the world, offered some valuable insights and lessons for my own community building work through the Baha'i community. I would like to share with you today a little bit about PAR, participatory research, not to idealize it in any way, but to share with you my attempts to tap into the accumulating knowledge of the human race. I also have the privilege today of sharing two inspiring stories of its use by students at the Baha'i Institute for Higher Education in Iran. And this is all in an attempt to complicate some of our traditional assumptions about how and why knowledge is generated and who is capable of producing new knowledge. My understanding of PAR is rooted in the field of education, that's my discipline, but I'm excited that this conference highlights some of the ways in which participatory approaches are used in other disciplines as well, and I look forward to learning from those. So what is participatory research? Participatory research is a process of collective, community-based investigation, education, and action for structural and personal transformation. This is all going to sound very familiar to all of us in this room. In social science research, it signifies an alternative paradigm of knowledge production in which groups who are adversely affected by a social problem undertake collective study to understand and address it. PAR is not just a method involving participation by research subjects. It presents people as researchers in pursuit of answers to questions of daily struggle and survival. It breaks down distinctions between the researcher and the researched and demystifies the role of the expert and returns to people the legitimacy of the knowledge they're capable of producing. It's based on the assumption that people are capable of understanding the social forces that shape the conditions of their lives. Research questions then speak to the needs of the group because they emerge from their shared experiences. PAR pushes academic research to be more democratic, meaningful, and of service to communities, especially those traditionally marginalized. It believes in the organic process of knowledge generation that was alluded to in the previous presentation as well. Orlando Falzborda, a Colombian scholar of PAR, says, Through the actual experience of something, we intuitively apprehend its essence. We feel and understand its reality, and we thereby place our own being in a wider, more fulfilling context. It believes that academic knowledge combined with popular knowledge, people's knowledge, and wisdom can result in new scientific knowledge that can break common sense assumptions that are embedded and perpetuated due to a monopoly on knowledge generated by a powerful few. PAR is often referred to as a people science for this reason. The production and diffusion of new knowledge produced collaboratively is integral to the research process because it is a central part of the feedback and evaluative process of objective of PAR. So in essence, community-based research approaches like PAR allow us to look closely at our neighborhoods, to question our surroundings, and to see how social, political, economic issues take shape in our neighborhoods and to engage in a process of inquiry and analysis around these issues with the intention of using the knowledge generated to find relevant solutions. The process of participatory research happens in three simple phases that symbolize the reading, analyzing, and transforming of reality. Developing capacity to do research among all participants is critical. Participants often learn how to do research by doing it in the process of researching their everyday lives and community. They then analyze collectively to make sense of shared experiences. Collective analysis includes a series of practices that are transparent, collaborative, and facilitate group ownership and collective negotiations. This analysis then feeds into research questions and becomes the basis of an inquiry. Infused in this process is systematic dialogue, reflection, and informed action. PAR then becomes a catalyst for change. Brazilian educator Paulo Freire embedded in this process the idea of praxis that discovery cannot purely be intellectual, but must also include action. Nor can it be limited to mere activism, but must include serious reflection. Praxis then involves a constant cyclical process of study, investigation, action, and reflection. An inspiring conversation between two founding fathers of this approach, Paulo Freire and Miles Horton, is documented in a fittingly titled book called We Make the Road by Walking. Horton, founder of the Highlander Center in Tennessee, which was a critical space for interracial dialogues and planning for the civil rights movement, tells Freire, I'm much better at working out ideas in action than I am in theorizing about it and then transferring my thinking to action. I'm enlightened by the things I learn working with people in action. The focus of PAR is on acting or informing action. Even if that action is to be found in the day-to-day activities of the participants transformed by their experience of the participatory research process. This rests upon an ontology which sees all human beings as dynamic agents capable of reflexivity and self-change and an epistemology which draws on diverse forms of knowing. Scholars of PAR continue to identify and articulate basic elements that lead to successful collective investigation and action, trusting relationships, the construction of safe spaces, transparency, honesty, love and even joy. Horton says, joy in learning together. To me, that was where I got my joy. I was always terribly excited and invigorated by learning things. Freire adds another key ingredient, love. Loving people, he says, it's very dialectical. Loving people, believing in people, it's necessary to laugh with people because if we don't, we cannot learn from them. And in not learning from people, we cannot teach them. While my most extensive participatory research experience was with students from some of the most under-resourced schools in Nepal, I have the privilege today of sharing with you two stories of students at the Bahá'í Institute for Higher Education in Iran committed to this idea of scholarship for social change. In a context where both their religious identity and their quest for knowledge were considered illegal, these students in BIAG's psychology program felt strongly that conducting meaningful research that would engage their communities and could have practical implications for social change was a better choice than simply finding answers in scholarly literature. In our initial meeting, one of the students said, this is a direct quote from her, this degree does not guarantee that I'll get a job when I'm done. I won't even get a credential that is recognized by the government or anywhere else, but I need this education to better my community and myself. Our problems are many, and if I don't do something, I don't know who will. That is why I need this education. So the first example, we will call her Sahar, a 20-year-old woman. She proposed a study that would engage women in her larger community on the high incidence of domestic violence. Her research questions were, how does domestic violence manifest itself in ex-community? According to female participants, what are the main triggers for violence against women? How can the community create mechanisms for protection and accountability? Although difficult, Sahar was able to recruit five women in the community to join her as co-researchers in the project. They met as regularly as they could to create interview questions, to conduct a survey of several households in the area, and to find most viable methods to collect data and information. Together, they embarked on months of data gathering, analyzing, and fact-finding. In our weekly online class meetings, Sahar would come having read all the assignments, assigned readings thoroughly, and with informed questions and great enthusiastic updates on her research project with the women in her community. As an instructor far removed from her reality, I would ask naive questions like, are you safe when you meet together? She would answer in a very matter-of-fact way, we're never safe, but you should see how much these women engage. What great ideas they have and how committed they are to making sure their kids don't learn the same violent behaviors. Sahar was meticulous, demanded rigor, and was committed to ensuring validity in her research by following each methodological step with the greatest precision. Her final project provided a complex view of a community where layers of power structures and unquestioned traditions took the form of violence against women within homes. At the intersection of gender, patriarchy, and power, these structures of oppression... Sorry, let me try that again. At the intersection of gender, patriarchy, and power, Sahar formed a research group committed to breaking down these structures of oppression at least at the level of home and family. It exemplified peaceful resistances and agency exercised by women to bring about positive changes in their lives and in the lives of their children. The group's proposed action plans based on in-depth interviews with community members and surveys were to offer classes for children that were geared towards imparting spiritual education. Classes that would normalize peacefulness, healthy love, respect, dignity as a counter approach to the normalized violence. Another outcome of the research project was a network of support among the women through a sense of solidarity that ensured safety for victims of domestic violence. Beyond this dual approach to countering a social issue, Sahar offered descriptions of the ways in which women bonded, spoke to each other, offered support, and became confident in their own role as researchers. The project was not without challenges specific to her context, and yet Sahar produced a brilliant final project, one that was fulfilling to her not because she received a credential or formal institutional recognition or a job offer, but because she felt her education offered some practical solutions towards eliminating a detrimental social issue. A second example. Twenty-four-year-old Behnaz joined B I H E from a rural province of Iran inhabited mostly by immigrant groups from Afghanistan. When she learned about participatory research in her research methods class, she felt it was the right match. As a child psychology student, Behnaz was deeply concerned with the heavy use of corporal punishment to discipline children. She proposed a study that would engage willing mothers in critical inquiry around their current discipline methods and investigate possibilities for more constructive alternative methods of positive discipline. I was actually skeptical, even though I was supposed to be in an encouraging role, would mothers be willing to join such a group if they were the ones enforcing these methods of punishment? Wouldn't they be resistant to change? How would you gather data for your project if you relied so heavily on their participation? Behnaz humbled me with her assurance. This is a direct quote from her. I know these women really well. We work together. I teach their children in school. They listen to me. Participatory research is good for this project because the solutions will come from them. It became clear that in her studies, Behnaz had carefully and thoughtfully worked out the logistics of this project, and all she needed was some additional academic support. During our online meetings, she would share progress and setbacks in her study with enthusiasm and not the least bit of pessimism. One significant finding in the early phases of her work was that despite their use of corporal punishment, the mothers in the research group believed in alternative approaches and were eager to learn about them. Behnaz skillfully combined some progressive techniques from her child development classes with the perspectives on spiritual training of children from her faith to offer a more asset-based perspective on raising children. She used this quote from the Baha'i Writings as the basis of her project. Some of you, I'm sure, especially the mothers in the group know this. Whensoever a mother seeeth that her child hath done well, let her praise and applaud him and cheer his heart, and if the slightest undesirable trait should manifest itself, let her counsel the child and use means based on reason. This quote provided the basis for her whole study. Over the course of only a few months, the mothers in the group tested some of the techniques at home and were so inspired by the results that they collectively created a simple handbook of these techniques to educate other mothers. They came up with simple, relevant, and feasible community education programs for other mothers who even hoped that they would eventually reach fathers. Behnaz's thesis documented the entire research project from beginning to end, making a case for the productive connection between collective inquiry, engaged dialogue, informed action, and reflection, but expanding the discourse and practice of par by infusing into it the application of religious and spiritual principles. Her findings highlighted the group's efforts in shifting a whole community's orientation towards raising children to include more nurturing and empowering methods. My co-instructor in Iran described her work as brilliant and most humbling, and this says a lot coming from someone who's very familiar with that context. Behnaz continues to serve this community as a teacher and a psychologist and continues to use these methods to engage the community in similar ways. Friends, par is not without constraints and limitations, but what it does provide is an example of a formalized process that believes in the ability of all people to investigate reality systematically, to shake common sense assumptions in search of new answers, and to engage in informed and relevant actions within a set of assumptions that move away from highly individualized and competitive knowledge hierarchies that currently shape much of educational discourse and practice. What it also provides for people like myself is a discourse and practice community that is open to new contributions and ideas. The revelation of Bahá'u'lláh gives us so much to contribute to these like-minded approaches that are perhaps, like Mr. Dunbar said last night, unconscious of Bahá'u'lláh's revelations, but certainly headed in directions in line with the unifying goals of the Bahá'í community. For a long time, discourse and policy on education have been shaped by an understanding of education as highly individualized, as a highly individualized endeavor that is neutral, objective, decontextualized, transmitted, and measured through competence on tests. As a result of alternative approaches like-par, the discourse is slowly but noticeably shifting to one where emphasis is placed on types of education that build capacity for collective action and social change. That is very much rooted in context that raises consciousness and one that is humanizing, welcoming, and allows all people to experience dignity. Now, after saying all this, I know many of you are thinking, Boris Shabnam, we already know this. You may be thinking, as I teach my children's class every weekend, as I facilitate an adult study circle around the nature of the spirit, as I empower junior youth to find meaningful ways of serving their communities, I am essentially doing participatory research. And you're right. There are elements of this in our work, and we have a lot to offer these approaches as well. What the worldwide Baha'i community is accomplishing by engaging in its community building is absolutely complementary to some of these approaches as they're driven by the belief that, quote, access to knowledge is the right of every human being. And participation in its generation, application and diffusion are responsibility that all must shoulder in the great enterprise of building a prosperous world civilization, end quote. The House of Justice also says, justice demands universal participation. And through participation in the educational process promoted by the Training Institute, they are motivated to reject the torpor and indifference incocated by the forces of society and pursue instead patterns of action which prove life altering. Thank you.