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- First Aid and Emergency Information
- General Information / Housekeeping
- Program Schedule
- Workshop Titles and Descriptions
- Presenter Biographies
- Map of Naramata Centre and Information
First Aid and Emergency Information
Onsite First Aid – During class time go to the Great Hall/Gym to find a school organizer or the identified First Aid person(s). Outside of class time, if you cannot find a school organizer or the identified First Aid person(s), visit the local hospital. Penticton Regional Hospital at 550 Carmi Avenue, Penticton.
Emergency Situations: Call 9-1-1 The Naramata Centre address is 460 Ellis Ave, Naramata.
The address of Naramata Centre Beach park which is booked Friday and Saturday evenings from 8PM to 10PM is 3595-3335 1 St, Naramata.
General Information / Housekeeping
Parent/Guardian Responsibility – Outside of daytime workshop times (Blocks 1,2,3,4,5 and 6), children are the responsibility of their parents/guardians. Parents/guardians are responsible for their children during meals, breaks, recreation times, all ages programming times and during the nights. Be mindful the Naramata Centre is open to the general public. Also be aware of traffic on the roads within and around the Naramata Centre.
Beach – There is no lifeguard at the beach and parents/guardians are responsible for their children. No classes should go to the beach during Blocks 1,2,3,4, 5 and 6. We have booked Naramata Centre Beach park (See link to the map at end of this page) on Friday and Saturday evenings from 8PM to 10PM. The occupancy limit is 50 so we need to stagger our visits. There will be a fire pit if campfires are allowed that weekend. We are responsible for any damages to the park and must leave it in a clean condition.
Registration Desk – Please check-in and pickup your name tag. The adhesive ones hold their “stickiness” for several days. You can also find the Lost and Found Box; the Cost Recovery Donation Box; and mosquito repellent and sunscreen here if you forgot yours.
Guests to Naramata Centre – While the school registrants have booked most of the accommodation units and some of the camping spots by our April 12th deadline, the general public is allowed to book the remaining accommodation. We have booked the venue spaces of the Great Hall (Gym) and Lounge and the Kitchen/Dining Areas. We will be sharing the Chapel and the Creekside Commons (a community space for campers to cook and eat) with other guests. The Chapel will be the place for dawn prayers but the occupancy limit is 40 so we will have to be mindful as individuals of our time spent there and that the general public may also use this space. Of course, dawn prayers may also be said outdoors in any suitable space.
Cell phones – please put on silent mode during workshop times.
Spirit of Volunteerism – We rely on the spirit of volunteerism and the proven theory that ‘many hands make light work’. Please help out where you see a need. The washrooms are an area that requires constant upkeep. Please be sure to clean up after yourself – drying off the counter with your hand towel when you’re finished makes a big difference throughout the day. If you notice more supplies are needed, please let the school organizers know.
Service in the Kitchen – Our hardworking cooks, Bahar and Mohebat Janfada, need our assistance. Please share the load and sign up to prepare, serve or clean up for a lunch / dinner meal and snack time and to help with breakfast duties. Sign up sheets are by the Registration Desk. Other than volunteers, the kitchen is off-limits to others due to Food Safe requirements. Those with special dietary needs will be served separately through the kitchen, next to the serving area.
Meals – At around 170 attendees, and a dining room capacity of 120-140, please help elders, parents with small children, and kitchen helpers to the front of the line. If the weather is nice you may take your plate outdoors but please return your dishes promptly for washing. If the weather is not nice please be aware that some of us will need to eat and then make space for others.
Games and Sports Equipment – There are some games and sports equipment for your use. Please bring them back to the Great Hall /Gym each time you are finished with them. The equipment is both borrowed and rented so please treat it carefully.
Bahá’í Books – There are books in the lobby from the Penticton and Lillooet communities on offer for donation towards the cost recovery of the school.
Program Schedule
All Adult programs will be in the Great Hall/Gym. Children’s Class for 5-7 year olds will be in the Dining Room and 8-10 year olds will be in the Lounge*. All Youth programs will be in Maple Court 200. All Junior Youth programs will be in Maple Court 100.**
* Children and Junior Youth will be taken from the Great Hall by their teachers at the start of their classes at each workshop/class Block. They will be returned to the Great Hall by their teachers at the end of each workshop/class Block to be reunited with their parents/guardians.
** On Sunday at 10AM it is accommodation/camping checkout time and the Youth and Junior Youth will move to the Dining Room or outdoors for the remainder of Block 5 and all of Block 6. (This is subject to change–we may be able to use the spaces in Maple Court 100 and 200 until 12:15 PM. To be confirmed at the school.)
| TIME | FRIDAY JUNE 13 |
| 2:00 PM | School Set up – Helpers Welcome |
| 4:00 PM | Accommodation Check-in |
| 4:30 PM | Registration begins |
| 6:00 PM | Light dinner served, bring a picnic or dine in town. |
| 7:15 PM | EVENING PROGRAM ALL AGES (Great Hall) |
| Welcome | |
| All Ages Icebreaker Game | |
| Art Presentation – Georgia Lesley | |
| Visit / Table Games | |
| 8-10 PM | Songs / Fire pit at Naramata Centre Beach park 8-10 PM (occupancy limit of 50 at a time) |
| 10:00 PM | School Venue Closes |
| 10:30 PM | Noise By-Law / Community Quiet Time 10:30 PM until 7:00 AM |
| TIME | SATURDAY JUNE 14 |
| 7:00 AM | Dawn Prayers – Chapel / Outdoors |
| 8:00 AM | Self-Serve Breakfast |
| 9:00 AM | Housekeeping Devotions |
| 9:15 AM | BLOCK 1 |
| 10:30 AM | BREAK |
| 11:00 AM | BLOCK 2 |
| 12:15 PM | Announcements / LUNCH BREAK |
| 1:30 PM | ALL AGES in Great Hall/Outdoors: Afternoon Recreation |
| 2:45 PM | Housekeeping Devotions |
| 3:00 PM | BLOCK 3 |
| 415 PM | BREAK |
| 4:45 PM | BLOCK 4 |
| 6:00 PM | DINNER BREAK WITH SCHOOL PHOTO LAST 10 MINUTES |
| 7:15 PM | EVENING PROGRAM ALL AGES (Great Hall) |
| Caroline MacKay | |
| John Penrice and Caroline MacKay | |
| Open Talent Night | |
| Visit / Table Games | |
| 8-10 PM | Songs at the Fire pit at Naramata Centre Beach park 8-10 PM (occupancy limit of 50 at a time) |
| 10:00 PM | School Venue Closes |
| 10:30 PM | Noise By-Law / Community Quiet Time 10:30 PM until 7:00 AM |
| TIME | SUNDAY JUNE 15 |
| 7:00 AM | Dawn Prayers – Chapel / Outdoors |
| 8:00 AM | Self-Serve Breakfast / Pack up Onsite Accommodation for 10 AM Check out time |
| 9:00 AM | Housekeeping Devotions |
| 9:15 AM | BLOCK 5 |
| 10:00 AM | BLOCK 5: At 10:00 AM – JY and Youth to Dining Room or Outdoors (subject to change) |
| 10:30 AM | BREAK |
| 11:00 AM | BLOCK 6 |
| 12:15 PM | Announcements / LUNCH BREAK |
| 1:30 PM | ALL AGES in Great Hall/Outdoors: Afternoon Recreation |
| 2:45 PM | Housekeeping Devotions |
| 3:00 PM | BLOCK 7: ALL AGES in Great Hall – Class Presentations / Closing Remarks / Closing Prayer |
| 415 PM | School Cleanup (Volunteer Helpers appreciated) |
Workshop Titles and Descriptions
Friday evening – All Ages
Symbiotic Relationships – “ The Art of Living Together ”
A short presentation with visual slides and some original artworks, depicting the fascinating ways that diverse creatures all over the planet have learned to live and exist by helping one another in the most interesting ways. Minerals, plants, animals and humans, we all need each other and God gives us the most beautiful examples of how perfectly organized His creation is. Georgia will bring copies of the artworks in black and white for children to colour.
Block 1 Saturday morning
Ridvan Message Workshop
Presenter: Auxiliary Board Member Lori Mason
Block 2 and 3 – Saturday morning and afternoon
Living a Life with Spiritual and Material Coherence
This interactive session will explore how we can align ourselves with the forces of integration to develop spiritual and material coherence in our individual, family, and community lives. Learn how reciprocity, cooperation, and the law of the Right of God contribute to spiritual and material well-being. Study guidance on making choices around education, work, and service.
Presenters: Gita Badiyan and Lynn Smith
Block 4 – Saturday afternoon
Reconciliation and the Search for Truth
Presenter: Garnet Robbie
Saturday Evening – All Ages
Caroline Mackay
Block 5 and 6 – Sunday morning
The Gift of Consultation in a Polarized World
This workshop will explore Bahá’í consultation in light of the complex challenges humanity is currently facing. Much of public discourse today is intractably dysfunctional, polarized and buried in a flood of mistrust, misinformation, and prejudices that undermine civility and relationships. Consultation offers a way to move beyond polarization towards a vision of truth seeking and deeper understanding. This requires a change in our individual and collective mindset and an awareness of deeply set patterns of behaviours and reactions.
The key goals for this workshop are:
- To explore the Bahá’í Writings and deepen our understanding on the nature of consultation in the context of a maturing humanity.
- To examine truthfulness as the ‘foundation of all human virtue’ in light of societal misinformation, disinformation and polarization.
- To demonstrate how one can take divided narratives and turn them into shared understanding and a shared future.
- To survey current research on what helps people be open to exploring unity and consensus.
This will be a highly interactive workshop with paired or small group activities.
Presenters: Gita Badiyan, Sharon Welsh, Victoria Laine
Block 7 – Sunday afternoon
ALL AGES in the Great Hall
Class Presentations / Closing Remarks / Closing Prayer / Feedback Session
Youth Workshop – Blocks 1 through 6
Work, Wealth, and Service in Light of the Bahá’í Revelation
A 2-day workshop engaging youth aged 15-25 years in small group interactive learning with an emphasis on personal reflection and expression through activities, storytelling, and the arts.
Presenter: Dr. Afshin Khazei
Presenter Biographies
Afshin Khazei
Afshin Khazei lives in North Vancouver where he serves as a representative for the Right of God, a member of the Local Spiritual Assembly, and on the board of directors for “Pebbles to Pearls” foundation, a Bahai-inspired charity. He works as an emergency physician at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH), medical director for the Hyperbaric Medicine Program at VGH, and Continuing Professional Development lead for UBC Department of Emergency Medicine. He is most proud of his 3 daughters, and if you want to get him excited, ask him about his time serving in Albania, China, Honduras, Nepal, or Vanuatu.
Caroline Mackay
Caroline Mackay is a composer, instructor and recording artist with her home studio in West Kelowna, in the Okanagan. She has created a lifelong career with her Voice & Celtic Harp. Inspired by the Life and Teachings of Bahá’u’lláh, the journey of the soul has somehow always taken her through the Seven Valleys, their mystical pathways of Search, Love, Unity… and especially Wonderment!
Caroline’s travels to England, Switzerland, throughout the USA and New Zealand as well as across the broad expanse of the Canadian landscape have served to inspire a diverse repertoire of music. Eight recording projects with vocals and harp, cello, guitar, piano and flute are dedicated to creating a new musical dynamic, and to uplifting the present generations. Caroline’s collaborations include concerts with Grant Hindin-Miller and Sonbol Taefi, recordings with Sia Samimi, Rayond Switzer and Aaron Ferrera, and harp tracks for Elika Mahoney. Initiating the Harp Trio “AnamCara” (Soul Friends) and conducting “The Okanagan Harp Orchestra” were each 15-year musical projects involving over two dozen others, all friends and musical companions.
The Interior Bahá’í Summer School has been a welcoming venue over the years, and Caroline is delighted to join the friends here again.
Garnet Robbie
Garnet became a Bahá’í as a youth and has lived in many communities throughout BC and the Yukon, as well as a homefront pioneer to Quebec and including 9 years as a pioneer in China. He recently discovered Mohawk and Linape (linapeh) ancestry though not enough to identify as an indigenous person, nor metis, but rather ‘with’ indigenous people. He currently co-facilitates an Indigenous Studies group with the Association for Bahá’í Studies.
Georgia Lesley
Georgia Lesley is a Bahá’í artist and published illustrator born on Vancouver Island, growing up in Vancouver and currently living in 150 Mile House in the Cariboo. She has been painting and drawing most of her life. This presentation is a portion of a year- long labor of love: to create 20 paintings with texts that she hoped would portray the beauty and perfection of our Creator’s love in and for the natural world. The full collection was displayed in the Station House Gallery in Williams Lake in 2024. She can be contacted on Facebook or e-mail.
Gita Badiyan
As a Bahá’í, Gita’s vision embraces the richness and diversity of all faiths and traditions. She works diligently to cultivate a shared sense of humanity both in her work as a management consultant and in her personal life.
Gita is currently serving as a representative of Huququ’llah in SE Victoria. She also hosts a monthly Soul Café, where she has the privilege of fostering interfaith dialogue and encouraging individuals to embark on their own journeys of self-discovery and spiritual growth.
Over the years Gita has lived and served in Colombia, in Papua New Guinea and various other communities around the world. She is now an Associate Faculty in Leadership Studies at Royal Roads University and a proud mother of three adult children who help make a positive difference in the world one day at a time.
Lynn Smith
Lynn became a Bahá’í at the age of 19 while serving with the Company of Young Canadians on the Penticton reserve. This was at a time when there were many young people searching for answers to questions such as: “who am I” and “what is my purpose?” For Lynn, all the answers were found in the Bahá’í Writings. Having finished her commitment to the CYC Lynn went to college to take an Executive secretarial course. This is where she met her future husband who shortly after became a Baha’i too. Within three months they found themselves pioneering to Hay River, NWT. A year later the National Spiritual Assembly asked them to leave their pioneer post and move to Edmonton in order to help form the National Indigenous Teaching Committee where Lynn served as its secretary. A few years later, they spent 8 months travel teaching overseas. While in Tanzania a cable was received from the Canadian National Assembly asking them to return to Canada for Lynn to serve with Allen Raynor in the Office of Legal Affairs. Upon moving to British Columbia in 1991 Lynn served as a member of the Bahá’í Council of British Columbia, later as an Auxiliary Board member and currently is serving as a representative for the Institution of Huququ’llah, the Right of God. Each service has been an opportunity to experience the power of the Word of God to transform individuals, communities and institutions. Each service has also brought about a deeper and deeper appreciation of the coherence of all our activities large and small. No one can build the world anew on their own and Lynn is grateful to be a part of such a richly diverse Bahá’í community whose vision is world embracing.
Sharon Welsh
Sharon always says the best thing that ever happened to her was discovering the Bahá’í Faith in her 40’s, as it helped her make sense of the world and has inspired and shaped her life since.
Sharon has spent most of her adult life working in social services. She has a Master’s in Education, has taught at the University of Victoria and worked for several non-profit organizations in Victoria and abroad.
Sharon found inspiration in the Bahá’í Teachings on consultation and about a year ago began meeting with other Bahá’ís to both deepen their understanding and explore ways of applying or sharing Baha’i consultation within the Bahá’í community and the broader community. This workshop is an outcome of this deepening and exploration.
Victoria Laine
Victoria’s hope for a better world was ignited many years ago with the new understanding of how the foundation of the Bahá’í teachings is based on the power of consultation and the healing of racism.
A lifelong learner, Victoria works as a college educator, private consultant, and business owner, in the areas of social justice, social services, and holistic health.
She facilitates a reconciliation learning circle in her community where understanding and action are key to healing the traumas of colonization and racial supremacy.
Victoria trains mental health practitioners to facilitate an innovative program that revolutionizes mental health care for communities with a focus on the sacred.
The mysteries of both this world and beyond keeps her open, engaged, and in awe, hoping she is honouring Creator’s plan for her life.
Map of Naramata Centre and Information
Here is a map to the Naramata Centre: Map Link (PNG)
Here are some of the policies Naramata Centre Policies
More can be found at the bottom of the page of their website Naramata Centre under Resources.
Your accommodation confirmation email states the following policy to avoid a cleaning fees:
- Please return your site / indoor space to its original state
- All dishes washed and put away
- All garbage & recycling (empty bottles / cartons, etc) taken to the large garbage bins next to the campground (near Columbia Hall)
