"Love is to the human heart what sunshine is to the flowers." Being the visionary that he was, Swami Chinmayananda saw that in the hi-tech urban civilization both sunshine and love would be hard to come by. Anticipating this need, he started the Bala Vihars. The children meet at the mission center on a weekly basis and the children and the sevaks /sevikas learn the art of living in love, the Hindu way. The idea is to provide an environment where the personality of the child blossoms in a spontaneous way. Good conduct, emotional refinement, intellectual finesse and spiritual awareness are developed by mature sevaks through fun and play, and through stories and bhajans. Sometimes it is through tears, but more often through smiles; sometimes through strictness, but mostly by persuasion. The children are encouraged to be responsible, alert and sensitive members of society. Swamiji believed that just as the strength of a wall depended on the quality of each brick, so too, the health of a society depended on the individuals. If the individuals are healthy, the society is healthy. His strategy for building a new society was to "Catch 'em young."