jai bhim international -caste-free generation- giving thanks 2011 This year we are giving thanks for our JBI community in India, in The U.S. and beyond. We welcome your support of this winter's projects. Thank you.     We are thankful for the INSPIRATION of our Kereala team, who went door-to-door in villages all over South East India last Fall, recruiting youth for our 2010 Communicative English retreat, inspiring 65 young people, 50% girls and young women, to attend our 5 days of workshops. An impressive increase since our first retreat in 2009 with 15 retreatants, all young men. In 2010 our youngest retreatants were 2 girls 11 and 13 years old, whose mothers walked in from their village each afternoon, bringing fresh clothes for their daughters to wear the following day. We are thankful for the INGENUITY of our Kerala Support Team, who'd volunteered to help with registration and transport on our first day, but stayed all week, decorating a concrete podium with a colorful Buddhist shrine, hand-made posters documenting the history of the caste system in their communities, books from their homes for a Reading Room area, and hand-lettered posters announcing the day's agenda and summarizing the workshop's themes. They also wrote up their own Retreat Evaluation Form, compiling responses from retreatants, presenting us with feedback at the end of the retreat! And we are thankful for the local women we hired who cooked such delicious food for us all week long, keeping us nourished and energetic.    We are thankful for the CURIOSITY of the girls and young women on our Kerala retreat, who stayed up late into the night reviewing their notes from the day's workshops, debating themes they'd learned from Arun's engaging presentations on The History of India's caste system. We are thankful for the VISION of our Sakya Hostels team. Their community serves 50 children from some of the poorest tsunmai-affected Dalit villages near Chennai. Their work is so respected that the President of the Women's Neighborhood Association petitioned the Village President on their behalf for a donation of land. The land was granted during our January visit, as well as the services of architects and builders, and the construction of their new home is currently underway!  We are thankful for the CREATIVITY of our allies in Nagpur who organized a Buddhist Arts Event, at the Diksha Bhumi grounds, offering a week of music, dance, poetry and visual arts, including an exhibition of new paintings by Savi Savarkar. Our South India teams gathered there, meeting with socially-engaged Buddhists from all over India.       We are thankful for the GENEROSITY of our USA team who've been helping us build support for our projects, designing brochures, offering dance and music at our Barefoot Bhangra event, donating goods and services to our raffle, hosting a Happy Hour benefit, arranging presentations about Dr. Ambedkar at a local high school, and inviting us to co-present 2 films at The South Asian Film Festival. We are so inspired by our JBI projects. We are especially thankful for YOU and your support. Your investments in JBI have allowed our work to organically evolve in ways that meet the needs of the youth we serve. We welcome your CONTRIBUTION as we prepare for this year's India trip. THANK YOU for joining the caste-free generation! with love, , Dayamudra (formerly Ann) Dennehy, Creative Director
Jai Bhim International is a non-profit organization, with 501 (c) (3)status as of July 24, 2008, #26-3130349.  jai bhim international -caste-free generation- |
