When you think of the word education, things like reading, writing, math and science may come to mind, but there is much more to it than what we learn in school. Education is everything we learn in our lives, from learning to walk, to learning how to make new friends. What we learn when we are young shapes our future, which is why it is important to be surrounded by a good environment. The things in our environment greatly affect our education; the people, information, and ways of life we encounter contribute directly to image and understanding we develop about our lives. Everything we come in contact with, as a child, affects what we do later in life. Being surrounded by a positive environment and learning good morals is crucial for a virtuous development. It is hard to reshape the way a plant is positioned, after it has fully grown, just like it is hard to reshape someone’s habits when they are older.
The Junior Youth Empowerment Program is a good example of a positive culture of learning. It helps the junior youth, who are at a critical stage in their lives, look towards the good. It teaches the crucial, moral, spiritual and ethical skills society often fails to transmit to this important age group. It helps junior youth apply relevant scientific, moral and spiritual concept to the analysis of the world around them, and the formulation of personal convictions upon which their future social ideology can be built.
Nurturing these capacities in junior youth groups tends to bring out the best and most noble aspects of the adolescent soul, mind and spirit. Being a junior youth, not only ensures responsibility, but patience, discernment, wisdom, and many more essential virtues.
Working together, with different junior youth, it is a great cultural enrichment. It helps each one grow and develop harmoniously within human society.
By staying engaged in a systematic educational process that increases the junior youth’s capacity for service, they will remain in the forefront of the process of preparation to become active agents within communities, and become real parts of the ‘living organism’ of humanity.
Going beyond what we are taught in school, and expanding our knowledge both spiritually and academically is very important, and helps us grow and thrive continuously.
