Property:Othercommunitywork
From Tsadra Foundation Advanced Contemplative Scholarships
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2
When I lived in the UK, I used to be one of the main drivers to pick up and drop lamas and teachers to and from our Buddhist centre Palpung Changchub Dargye Ling in Wales. +
mostly doing volunteering work for different Buddhist centers. +
Having been very active in community organizing and fundraising work in my life in New Orleans, after moving to Katog Rit’hrod I really focused my energy on Khentrul Rinpoche’s activity. Most of the work I did outside of the Katog Rit’hrod land was helping with the retreat cabins and homes of the Dharma community surrounding it. +
I worked as a support worker with foster kids and adults with special needs for several years. I have volunteered with several homelessness charities, including being a live-in volunteer at a Catholic Worker community for about three months. +
I have volunteered for various cancer organizations (as a survivor myself), and teaching English while I was young in Beijing, and again in Panama now where I currently live. I have worked together with the Panamanian government in several different political and state capacities. In Panama, for a lack of centers, I find myself as a natural leader in discussing Buddhism, but have only felt qualified enough to hold an egalitarian reading group to discuss general topics. +
Presently, I am a Practicing Psychotherapist/Somatic Therapist, where I serve a portion of the community who have an interest in Buddhist practice and meditation. +
My entire adult career in a professional capacity has been working with people with disabilities in the communities in which I have lived.
In my early teenage years, after a mind-expanding experience, I organized a Walk for Development to help disadvantaged people find housing in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. I organized multiple high school districts to work together to combat pollution (air, water, trash) in the Shenandoah Valley. In my home town, I organized a clean-up of a creek that ran through town that was an open-air garbage dump. As a result of my environmental work, I attended the White House Conference on Youth as an Environmental Activist in 1970. I am a vegetarian for most of my adult life and helped to start some of the very first "health food stores" in San Francisco....which evolved from my commune who was part of the Food Conspiracy network of communes in the Bay Area. +
I was living in Denmark and stayed at the Gomde Buddhist Centre and helped them out for two months. I was the cook for my time there. I have also volunteered in various second hand shops in my home town near Manchester. +
A
Volunteering with Nature Conservancy, Speaking at Colleges and Universities on the topic of plant medicine. +
Un peu de bénévolat pour Palden Shangpa +
I'm part of the Buddhist community at HDS but don't hold any official role. I'm broadly involved elsewhere in promoting nonviolence and peaceful conflict resolution skills, especially at the moment through my work-study position at Harvard Hillel. In 2017-2018, I'll be working 15 hours a week to develop a program to educate local high school kids about antisemitism and malevolent prejudice, and try to help them be kinder to each other. +
I have been passionate about community work since a very young age. From April 2016-2018 I lived at Haley House, a soup kitchen in Boston that provides free meals for people experiencing homelessness. It is run by volunteers that live in community together in the building. During this time I would spend summers at Gomde CA in retreat and as a volunteer. Since 2018, I have been teaching Yoga in every community I land in. I now teach in 11 locations, including studios, senior centers, businesses, free outdoor classes, classes for the queer community, meditation circles and Dharma talks. This is currently the spaces where I feel most able to connect the Buddhist teachings with the needs of my immediate community. +
Volunteering at local animal shelter (Nantucket Safe Harbor for Animals) (Nantucket, MA - 2019-2020)
Dreamland Stage Company - Youth Mentor, Stage Assistant, Photographer and Filmmaker (Nantucket, MA - 2019-2020)
Residence Caretaker and Kitchen Service - Vipassana Meditation Center (Various locations - 2018 - 2019)
Event Preparation - Nantucket Unitarian Universalist Church (Nantucket, MA - 2020)
YMCA Youth Leader (Taunton, MA - 2021 [employed])
Service worker at Nantucket Food Pantry (I volunteered for 2 years before being hired) (Nantucket, MA - 2019-2020) +
I have been participating to different student projects promoting nature and literature during my College years. I also participated in the foundation of a new alternative high school in Brussels in 2017-2018, le Lycée Intégral Roger Lallemand. If I was paid, it was also a community work in which I gave myself fully and intensely, much more than one would do for a normal job. We were creating a very new way of teaching, and it was a beautiful year. The school has been growing since and has currently over 700 students, who have the opportunity to learn and study in an environment that promotes openness, kindness and sharing. +
B
various publications in German: Milarepa's biography, Taranatha's Golden Garland, Sadhanas, etc. +
I did volunteer at two different cat shelters. Helping with cleaning and feeding the cats. +
C
As a teenager I could only work for a short time (as the refugee camp was closed very soon) as child caretaker of traumatized refugee children from former Yugoslavia and was furthermore active in my schoolsХ Anti-fascist group, where we tried to develop awareness programs. During my time as a student of Ethnology and African studies, I was involved in different projects: As a volunteer I took part in community development projects and development educational workshops organized with the ТUsungu Women GroupУ in Makueni/Kenya at the beginning of my studies. At a later point in time I participated in the establishment of a ТCenter for scientific debate & transcultural understanding in South EthiopiaУ (SOMARC/later SORC, http://www.southomoresearchcenter.com/), which was mainly funded as a platform for peace building in an area of various cultural divergent, mostly hostile ethnic groups. At the final stage of my studies, I had been to Mali and focused more and more on the core of my objectives, development aid and especially alphabetization. It was during that time that I became increasingly aware and disillusioned by this scientific and only on development goals orientated approach of trying to allay the gross suffering of sentient beings. I had seen too much corruption, unbelievable useless development projects and especially after having done an internship at an office for democracy and reform, which was in charge of the realization of UN and EU projects, how much power structure, image, deadlines, profit and corruption had destroyed the core idea of humanity. That was not the way I had dreamed of to benefit sentient beings, and it was at this point in time that I finally and fortunately meet my Gurus and the Dharma with a totally new understanding and right approach to deal with the sufferings of the world. +
- Colaborator of CASA - Centro de Apoio ao Sem-Abrigo, in Porto, Portugal (2007-2008), a project by Pema Wangyal Rinpoche to help homeless people all over the world +
