The ease with which their 13-year-old daughter Amelia communicates with fellow junior youths around the U.S. and Canada gave Phillip and Samira White of Roswell, Georgia, an idea: Why not electronically connect junior youth groups in two different places to foster friendship and encouragement?

Over a span of two years the Whites observed how Amelia stayed in touch with her middle-school-age peers from a past session at Louhelen Bahá’í School in Davison, Michigan.

“There’s always a good side and a bad side to tech. The good side was that all these Bahá’í junior youth were so excited to become friends — being about the same age and trying to figure out how to fit into this world that is so tumultuous,” notes Phillip White.

“They started using technology like Snapchat and they built this group of junior youth from the Midwest and the Southeast and Canada,” he says. And through “constant contact with each other on a daily basis” they “continued their friendship and their love for one another and support for one another.”

Much to the delight of White, who says he and his wife have “done everything we can to support” this “recharging” of the junior youths’ “Bahá’í batteries.”

“It's just one of those things that we see as parents,” he says. “We know there are so many outside forces in the world, and the more friends you can develop who help you to stay anchored to the Faith no matter what is going on is really critical.”

Part of that support has been helping the group of middle-schoolers get together periodically. They have met twice more at Louhelen, in a junior youth session and later at a family session. Last December at the Grand Canyon Bahá’í Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, they immediately sought each other out on arrival.

In between, the Whites have seen Amelia grow in confidence to invite friends and friends of friends to a thriving junior youth group, which the family and other Roswell Bahá’ís host in tandem with study circles and children’s classes.

And they have tapped into their daughter’s enthusiasm. While at the Grand Canyon Conference the Whites met with long-standing friend Brandon Bullock to consult about using the miracle of technology to connect the Roswell junior youth group with one in Chandler, Arizona, some 1,800 miles away.

“We have certain things in this country that are unique to us, so how do you use them to your advantage?” White reasons. “We thought, what a cool thing it would be for a group of junior youth who don’t really know each other — and probably half are not Bahá’ís — to see another group of junior youth all the way across the country who are doing and working for the same things.”

As of press time a date hadn’t been settled on to start the interaction. “They meet on Fridays and we meet on Sundays,” says White, “but we’ll figure that out.”