Graduation Newsletter from India

View this email in your browser Greetings from Bangalore! Another successful year!! 130 students graduated this year to higher grades and it was time for celebration for these deserving children. Here are the events of the graduation ceremony day. Graduation Day Celebrations 30th April was the grand finale of the academic year 2018-19.  The Graduation Ceremony! And the stars of the show? The children who graduated.  They were so thrilled to have finished the course and to have performed well.  Not only did they shine in scholastic achievement, they also excelled in their other activities such as arts and crafts, performance, cleanliness, attendance, punctuality, reading, handwriting etc. It was a happy and proud occasion for the parents to see their children being “officially recognised” at the graduation ceremony, receiving their certificates and moving up to higher grades. The  credit goes to all the teachers who  taught the children, cared for them, and made education a fun learning experience. A total of 130 children graduated from our 7 centres. As a part of the ceremony interspersed with the giving away of the certificates the children also performed a skit and  dances. Overall it was a wonderful experience for all.  The program was held in the GD Mara slum and the whole  community had a glimpse of the celebrations and were proud of the children of their community receiving their graduation certificates. Visitors From Japan It was a special touch of excitement for the children to have a big team of visitors from Japan to attend their Graduation ceremony.  They made this trip just to be here with the children for the ceremony. They were received with warmth and garlands and a traditional tikka on the forehead.  80 children are being sponsored for primary, middle and high school by different individuals from Japan. The team inaugurated the event by lighting the lamp with the students.  A total of 130 graduates were present together at GD Mara for the program. The team visited the homes of the children from the GD Mara slums and got to know the families of the children. The team also performed to a traditional Japanese folk song and the children joined them in the dance. They also visited our centres spending time with the students talking with them, doing fun activities and getting to know them personally. “Thank you Meg and Team for travelling all the way just to celebrate Building Blocks Graduation Day and meet the students you sponsor. Your passion to educate and empower the children from the marginalised communities is going to set them all on a new path."  You are amazing!! A Special Gift!  A Special Thanks to Meg, the Japanese team and everyone who helped to present this good quality leather school bag to all the Project + 10 children of Bluebells Centre. The children and their parents are very thankful for this generous and thoughtful gift. Thank You!  We want to thank each one of you for playing such an important role of supporting the cause of educating these children and setting them up for a progressive future. Share Tweet Forward

International Convention of Peacemakers

An intriguing invitation

The convention website at http://peace-con.org/ 

In January, I received an invitation to an event in Kathmandu.

The event sounded rather weird and wonderful, entitled International Convention of Peacemakers for Universal Harmony, and the organisation described itself as a platform to bring together intellectuals across the world, who are the well-wishers and practitioners of humanity. 

I was intrigued and read more at http://peace-con.org/ The invitation came from a doctor I had met and chatted with at an ashram near Bangalore last year. I was apprehensive, but never being one to turn down an excuse to travel, I blocked the dates on the calendar and booked my flights. 

The Valley of Kathmandu

The conference content was eclectic. I cringed at the music videos, which reminded me of the personal development and multi-level marketing seminars I dabbled with in the 90's.

I was bewildered when the sticking-points of the discussion groups were laid at the feet of the white-clad guru who would then deliver his enlightenment, and I struggled to understand some of the broken English that is the lingua franca  throughout South Asia.

Learning to accept the unconventional and seemingly unlikely

To be honest, I struggled with some of the mood and terminology of the event. I had to learn the meaning of duality and  non-duality, which I initially found most confusing. I had to grapple with the deeper concepts that the organisation envisioned behind Humanity and Nature, and I had to accept the possibility that Science had diverted us away from deeper truths that Society had rejected as superstition over the centuries and millennia. 

What was unsettling was to discover that this resurrected knowledge was endorsed by clear evidence in the results of the organisation's innovations in both Health and Agriculture.

Farmers who eliminated chemical fertilisers and pesticides saw increases in crop yields within two seasons,. Medical conditions that resisted modern medication were alleviated by unusual treatments, including the mystery of Sound Therapy. 

Being one of only three delegates from outside the region, the others being a young Japanese businessman and a retired American academic living in Sri Lanka, I was treated with unearned reverence. I was also asked to deliver a brief opening and closing address for the event.
The messages of the programme demanded a leap of faith that challenged even an ageing bearded hippy like me. When they asked me to speak at the opening session, I had no idea what to expect over the next days, and this is what I said:

The central themes of this convention are Equality, Unity and Prosperity. These words will mean different things to different people, and I have the privilege of being asked to be the Voice of the UK

So, what is the Voice of the United Kingdom – or any country?

The voice is not what a country says: it is what a country does.

The message is in their actions.

·         It’s in the way they treat the poorest members of their community, and their children and their elderly.

·         It’s the way they relate to their neighbours . . . and whether they acknowledge that we are all neighbours in this global village.

·         However, the present Voice of the UK is not Unity, nor is it Connection or Love. The voice of the UK says Separation

Three years ago, the British people voted against continuing to be part of a United Europe. It was a close vote, and the electioneering process was corrupt but, by a narrow majority, the UK voted to leave the EU.

There were extreme attitudes affecting many of those who voted to leave, but behind these extremes was one common thread: British people felt that they had lost the “Voice of the UK.”

Perhaps the central and most significant motivation was that a majority of voters did not want people, whom they saw as foreigners, influencing British politics, even though by leaving the EU, the UK would cease to influence the politics of the continent of Europe, of which Britain is part.

Millions of British people voted to Leave because they did not identify as Europeans. They wanted to be British, but they no longer had any clear idea of what this meant.

They were losing their identity, – like thousands of the tribes of the world who are swamped by global culture, with a global identity that in no way represents them nor their communal traditions.

What is it that unites people and gives them their identity when everything conspires to divide us?

We are divided by 6,500 spoken languages.

Even a country with a common language, is divided by dialect and accent, and the national language is often not the mother tongue of a significant proportion of a country’s population.

Identity is generally drawn from history, tradition and heritage, but rather than looking backwards, might it not be better if a country staked its identity in limbo, half-way between the present, and where it seeks to be in the future?

This would be a fluid, self-regulating identity that bends with the wind and matures with time. An identity with a one-word definition: HUMAN, and a single culture: HUMANITY.

Communication is not about what you say, it’s about what the other party hears. It’s not a matter of what you mean, it’s a matter of what the other person thinks you mean.

Painful misunderstandings are easy when one or both of you are communicating in a language other than their mother tongue.

When we communicate with words, the other person’s brain has to translate and ascribe a meaning – an emotion – a sentiment to those words.

And all too often, the meaning is lost in translation.

We need to communicate our message of Equality, Unity and Prosperity through our actions.

·         Not with noisy words, but with silent actions.

-and we can go one layer deeper. . .

o   Not by doing, but by being.

People will not change the world when they change what they say; they will change the world when they change what they do.

Oh yes! - of course there is a time for words, - like now, at a convention, perhaps.

But in a world that is deafened by words and languages, actions will always speak louder.

We will not achieve Peace through words . . .

Whether we speak them,

Sing them, or

Chant them.

Whether we write them in documents,

Carve them in stone, or

Scrawl them in graffiti on walls.

We must act, from a position of love, connecting, and leading by example.

Doing nothing is not an option.

We will only make a difference by being the difference.