One of the pressing needs at the BWC, is for people with expertise in the science of conservation. How best to conserve documents and artefacts? For example the shoes of Bahá'u'lláh. What happens to them after 500 years? Conservation is a science that is concerned with things like slow-rate chemical processes that can occur over hundreds of years.
How do we conserve the texts, the ink and the paper upon which the original texts are written? This is the science of conservation. Bahá’ís who have done a degree in chemistry and don’t know what to do with it, can go on and do a graduate program in conservation. For example, the University of Canberra has a good program. They can then serve at the Bahá’í World Centre, we need them there and in a number of other places as time goes by.
One of our greatest needs is for archivists, experts in archival science. We have a pressing need for more Bahá’ís who have archival experience to help us in running our own archives at the World Centre, and in future the archives in major places such as Wilmette, here in Sydney, and in Frankfurt. If you want to have nightmares, start thinking about the records of the National Assemblies in the Pacific Islands. Because the National Spiritual Assemblies (NSAs) in the Pacific Islands don’t have the facilities to maintain their minute books and basic correspondence of what happened. For example, how was the NSA of Fiji formed and what happened over the years? So we have pressing needs for archival skills, and as there are good programs in Australia so you might encourage people going in that direction to think about it.
We need Bahá’ís with library science skills. We are scouring the world for qualified librarians. Our BWC library has a number of authorised positions and it’s about half filled at the moment because we cannot find qualified Bahá’í librarians.
There is an on going need for accountants and financial analysts and, in some cases, people with investment skills.
There is a great need at the BWC for executive secretaries, better described as Executive Aides. Typically, the direction in which we are going is that each member of the House of Justice and each member of the International Teaching Centre has and will have an Executive Aide who will, in turn, direct 1 or 2 more staff. At present I have a Secretary Aide who is a high level person and she has an Assistant Secretary. And I can see that expanding a little bit in the future. So we need people who are executive secretaries, somewhat like a company secretary. Someone who has a level of maturity in decision-making and good understanding and that’s probably something we will need more and more.
We need people in property management because we have over 100 apartments where we keep our staff, because it is cheaper for us to own these properties than rent them. Also we will have property acquisitions as the BWC expands and develops in time to come.
Lawyers are always a need. We have a small legal office of 2 lawyers, both of whom happen to be from Australia. We will need to expand that. It defends us when we are sued, which is reasonably common because everyone has the idea that we must be incredibly rich from having beautiful marble buildings. In addition, occasionally someone says something in the newspaper that they shouldn’t say, and we need to do something about it.
We also have very complex legal issues to negotiate with the State of Israel with our Status Agreement which gives us various rights in terms of taxation and importation and visas and the like. More and more, our legal office at the BWC is called upon to give advice to the House of Justice in response to National Assemblies. The NSAs write to us about Privacy Acts and matters like that and we have to respond to various issues that they raise. So our legal office has a range of things to deal with and that will require lawyers. Particularly lawyers who are not only smart but also are devoted believers with the degree of discipline to work with the House of Justice.
I have pretty much finished what I wanted to say and if you’re still alive I’m willing to take any questions or any discussion you may want to raise.
(The Need for Bahá'ís of Capacity and Expertise by Peter J. Khan, 2002)
https://bahai-library.com/khan_bahais_capacity_expertise
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