Mark Scheffer and the Bahá’í International Community by Diane Findlay

Submitted January 2024

NOTE: This piece is based on a phone interview with Mark.

The Bahá’í International Community (BIC) is an organization that represents the worldwide Bahá’í community in promoting peace and advancing unity and society building at the global level. The Office is directed from the Bahá’í World Centre. In 1948, BIC registered with the United Nations as a Non-Governmental Organization and has consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council and the UN Children’s Fund. It’s also accredited with the UN Environmental Program and the UN Department of Global Communications. It collaborates with a number of UN agencies and a network of other national and international offices under the Bahá’í Office of External Affairs.  BIC has United Nations offices in New York and Geneva, as well as regional offices in Addis Ababa, Brussels, and Jakarta. To learn more about the organization, visit https://www.bic.org/.

In 2010, Mark Scheffer of Sioux City began to work as a volunteer collaborator with the New York City office of the Bahá’í International Community, helping with various projects from home. In 2012, he was hired as one of two full-time Senior Researchers and has worked in that capacity ever since. Mark visits the NYC office at the United Nations three or four times a year to consult in person with fellow staffers.

As a Senior Researcher, Mark researches and generates content for a variety of BIC communications, ranging from informal remarks presented by BIC Representatives, support materials for various organizational events, and “thought pieces” on various relevant topics, to major pieces like “Rising Together: Building the Capacity to Recover from Within” from 2016, “One Planet, One Habitation: A Bahá’í Perspective on Recasting Humanity’s Relationship with the Natural World” from 2022, and “A Governance Befitting” from 2022.

Mark feels blessed to be able to serve in this way. It’s exciting, he says, to learn about ongoing projects and possibilities for tackling global issues and advancing civilization all over the world. He sees a shift in the focus of the organization, during his time there, toward contributing to the discourses of society through exploring issues with a widening range of collaborators. He reports that communications from the Bahá’í World Centre indicate that the Universal House of Justice anticipates the impact of the BIC will only increase as the world progresses through the ongoing twin processes of disintegration and integration. It’s an interesting time, he says, to be part of the organization’s efforts!