Raising a New Generation

October 20, 2006

Source: Baha'i World News Service

http://www.news.bahai.org/story/486

Although this sub-city (Nefas Silk Lafto) on the western edge of Addis Ababa is home to numerous foreign embassies and international development offices, it nevertheless has its share of poverty and unemployment.

Most of the residents, if they have jobs at all, are manual laborers or domestic workers -- construction workers, cooks, maids, and clothes washers. HIV/AIDS is another challenge, leaving behind many single- or no-parent families.

So it is not uncommon most days of the week to find children here working on the streets, helping to provide the evening meal by polishing shoes, selling fruits and vegetables, or simply begging.

On Saturdays, however, the scene is somewhat different. Many of those same children can be found gathered at the home of a Baha'i family, attentively studying, among other things, the importance of common virtues like honesty, trustworthiness, and nobility of self.