Personal Development
Over the past few months there have been a few Personal Development programs and halaqas, mostly during Ramadan, but now that we have officially started we want to make sure everyone is on the same page. We’re sorry if this is repetitive for those of you who joined the halaqas in Ramadan.
The MYNA Personal Development committee was formed in January of 2009. The committee is made up of MYNA Advisors from the MYC and MYNA alumni, and the goal of the committee is to provide MYNA officers with programs and halaqas that follow a specific personal development curriculum. The PD committee has culminated the feedback of about 14 scholars in the process of making this curriculum, which is tailored specifically to MYNA Officers who hold a position on the national, regional, or local level. Insha’Allah we hope to extend these programs to the rest of the MYNA youth and also non-MYNA youth in the future.
One of programs that we’ve created is the bi-weekly halaqa which will be broadcast twice a month; each halaqa follows a topic on the curriculum and will be accompanied by Q&A, a short discussion, and exercises and activities to be done and reflected on for the following two weeks. The committee has also developed other materials that we hope will be beneficial. This includes book recommendations by scholars specific to each topic, and articles relating to topics on the curriculum. Additionally, sometime in the next year there will also be a PD retreat for all the officers which will be an intense, week-long retreat with the scholars and advisors; the curriculum will follow an even more focused and detailed curriculum.
The most important thing about this committee is that it was formed to serve you guys. If something isn’t working for you, if you have suggestions that’ll help you and everyone else benefit more, if you’d like to see us do more then please let us know. There is no other reason this committee exists except to serve you and we are at your disposal. That being said we hope you realize the importance of personal development in this whole thing we call “MYNA”. Just like you’d make an effort to shuffle around your schedule to make a MYNA conference call, you need to make time for your personal development. If we aren’t helping you, and if you aren’t making time for your personal development, then we’ve both failed. The scholars and discussion leaders that will be delivering and guiding discussions during the halaqas have gone out of their way to make time for MYNA only because they think it's important; we should be able to sacrifice our time to listen to the words and naseeha they offer us. May Allah give us the tawfiq to help eachother get closer to Him (swt).
Lastly, to make things more streamlined and communication less confusing we've created a listserve with all the MYNA officers and the MYC advisors (mynapd@myna.org). Use this listserve to help eachother and start discussions in the off weeks. Personal development is a process, and there will surely be lots of questions so utilize the advisors! If you have questions and/or suggestions specifically for the PD Committee then email pd@myna.org --this email is not the listserve and will go directly to the committee members.
