Individual initiative

Individual initiative in the Bahá’í Faith refers to any project that is initiated without the prompting or organisational support of an officially recognized body of the Bahá’í Faith. Such an initiative may, at some stage, seek support from such a body, and will probably receive the blessing of such a body, but the principle is that individual Bahá'ís have the right to take initiative and not wait for the lead of an institution. Individual initiatives are crucial to the expansion of the Faith, as the elected bodies do not have the time to organise every single thing, and do not exist everywhere anyway.

Individual initiative is therefore encouraged in every well-developed Bahá'í community. In the situation now prevailing, where the world has, for purposes of developing the Bahá'í community, been divided into areas called Clusters, individual initiative is crucial in extending activity to new clusters and to new areas inside a cluster. Such initiatives are seen as part of an overall strategy of organic development.