Tracks Beach is a gorgeous stretch of shoreline along Oahu’s Leeward Coast. On a recent glorious Saturday morning the beach was “invaded” by Army personnel and Baha’is from across Oahu. No, war had not broken out, but the two groups teamed up to conduct a massive beach clean up resulting in several hundreds pounds of rubbish “packed and stacked” from the beach and adjacent shrubs.
U.S. Army personnel assigned to Schofield Barracks in Central Oahu have an opportunity to participate in a wonderful “Better Opportunity for Single Soldiers” (BOSS) program. The BOSS program aims to improve the quality of life for single and unaccompanied soldiers who are serving their country a long way from home. The program has three core components of which one is Community Service.
For Baha’is, the Universal House of Justice in its Ridvan 2024 message stated “The call to service is an uplifting, all-embracing summons.” With that in mind, members of the Ewa Baha’i Community reached out to the BOSS Leadership Team to see if they would be interested in having some civilians join in with their clean-up. Without hesitation they responded with “yes, thank you, the more help the better.” What began with the thought of a few “kupuna” from the Ewa Community joining together with our young soldiers evolved into dozens of Baha’is from four communities – Ewa, Waianae, Honolulu and Ko’olaupoko, joining in for a morning of service.
A desire to “mix and match” during the clean-up meant soldiers and Baha’is were teamed up instead of working in two separate groups which seemed to be a success. While there were perhaps only a few hugs at the end of the morning – that is because participants were all sweaty and smelly – there were a lot of high fives and fist bumps and appreciation for a unique team effort to make the Waianae Coast a little better for everyone to enjoy.
