I am writing to give you an update on our Machu Picchu Stars doll-making project. The project began in the year 2000 with the idea of generating work for the poorest of the poor in Lima. We started with very little: about US$6, two borrowed sewing machines, and volunteer help. Our first commercial products were Peruvian ethnic dolls. We worked very hard designing, producing, and marketing them and by 2003 the project had grown enough that we were able to incorporate a working team of five hearing-disabled women. We named the project Machu Picchu Stars.
Since that time, we created a company called "Machu Picchu Stars Peru" which sells and markets the dolls and other products. To date we have sold more than 10,000 dolls. Our biggest client is a gift store in the Lima airport, and we have also exported dolls to Sweden, Italy, England, Germany, Brazil, Venezuela, Columbia, Taiwan, Japan and the United States. We now have a trained workforce of ten deaf women who earn a fair wage. Since 2006 we have also produced children's clothes, including recently for the American company Flit and Flitter, and have built up a capital of industrial sewing machines, materials, and finished dolls.
In Peru, when a person becomes deaf it usually terminates their chances for an education and to have a job. Because of the lack of special education in, most adult deaf people have not learned to speak, to read and write, or to use sign language fluently. So the challenge of the deaf is to communicate and most employers will not make the time nor have the patience to do this. These communication challenges make the deaf person almost unemployable. S/he often becomes depressed, loses self-confidence, and feels that s/he is a burden to the family. The mission of Machu Picchu Stars is to remove the barriers that Peruvian society has put in the way of deaf people and to give them the opportunity to work with dignity. It has been my greatest joy to see how the deaf members of our team have grown in self-confidence and self-esteem when given these opportunities. I have also seen again and again that our deaf women work harder and better than so-called "normal" people. They are able to share and work as a team in a way that puts hearing people to shame.
Seeing our successes and the potential to employ more deaf women, several years ago we started planning to build our own workplace and training facility. We bought land, made architectural plans, and started construction of the building in January of this year. Now the first floor of that workplace/training facility is almost finished. It will be the first sewing facility in Peru which employs and trains disabled people.
We would like to continue the momentum and also finish the second floor of our new building. Having the second floor will enable us to have separate spaces for cutting, sewing, quality-control and packaging. This is essential to doing quality and efficient work and will make the business more economically viable. It will also give us a separate environment for training in cutting and using industrial sewing machines. In one year, we plan to train 34 women in machine sewing and cutting. These women will also receive help with basic life skills.
To complete the second floor, we need approximately US$15,000 to cover materials and labor. For this we are writing to our friends and supporters to ask for help with either donations or loans. We calculate that loans can be paid back within a span of two year with profits from our business.
Join with us to help an already successful project reach and empower more disabled women who are now living in extreme poverty. Helping to lift one disabled woman from poverty also lifts her children and those around her from poverty.
Donations or loans can be sent from anywhere in the world in $US to our local bank account:
Bank name: Banco de Credito BCP
Bank Address: Jr. Lampa 499, Lima 01
Bank Telephone Number: +51-1-427-5600
Account name: Ananda Marga Universal Relief Team
Account number: 194-1788268-1-21
SWIFT code: BCPLPEPL
Thanks so much!
Venezuela
Didi Ananda Sadhana writes to update us on Centro Madre (June 2010):
In January 2000 I was part of AMURT's international relief team responding to the natural disaster in Venezuela which followed weeks of torrential rains. In the state of Vargas, mudslides wiped out entire villages and killed tens of thousands. We worked in the district of Barlovento (two hours east of Caracas by vehicle in the state of Miranda), where the El Guapo Dam had broken, causing thousands to lose their homes.
We learned that over 90 percent of the Barlovento population was Afro-Venezuelan, descendants of former slaves of cacao plantations. This was an area and a people that had historically been discriminated against and marginalized; 90 years ago a Venezuelan president had even banned the inhabitants from entering Caracas! One mayor told us that this place was "beyond hope", so we decided that this challenging region was where we wanted to start a permanent development project. And we built what is known today as Centro Madre.
Centro Madre is a Master Unit (farm and community project) with the purpose to strengthen communities and empower people. Success depends on relationships and trust, which we have slowly developed during the last ten years through many activities with five local villages. Two important focal points are now emerging:
First, education frees people from poverty and ignorance. Since 2007 Centro Madre's reading project has local coordinators in two villages lending children's books to each family with young children every week. With the support of CENAL (The National Center for Books), WWD-F and the Anayatola Foundation we have also included regular reading activities in a local primary school. Our storytelling program includes activities related to the story. For example, after telling the story of the indigenous queen Araguaney who became a tree to save her people from a horrible drought, we planted in the schoolyard with the children an Araguaney ("Yellow Poui"), the Venezuelan national tree.
We did a poetry-writing workshop that was held in Centro Madre twice for students aged 8-12. We chose the center because of its congenial environment which is peaceful and without distractions. First, we did fun games, some yoga stretching and deep relaxation. Then we started to talk about a very traumatic murder that had taken place on the street in their village two weeks before. Two families had been feuding for weeks. Their dispute escalated into a fight in which one man was killed. Due to threats and counter-threats, both families had to flee the village; their classmate is a member of one of those families. Two students had seen the murder, many had heard the shots, and of course everyone knew about it. Several children mentioned seeing their mothers crying. Clearly this caused a lot of anguish, fear and trauma in everyone. Memories of other traumatic deaths, including car accidents, came up. The environment was charged with a lot of emotion.
We decided to write down on the board what they were expressing, in this way validating their words. We put all their words and phrases into a poem. Both teachers present expressed how this process of verbalizing their feelings about the trauma was very constructive and healing, and they hope we will continue this sort of activity. Workshops like this can help bring collective healing and awareness about the trap of violence. Hopefully this will strengthen the children's resolve to avoid it by resolving conflicts in productive rather than destructive ways.
Four children from the fifth grade were selected to read their poem in a regional poetry festival and the school requested a follow-up activity in the center with professionals of the CCPD (Student Welfare Agency) to address the issue of violence together with troubled children of the school. Afterwards a group of mothers and grandmothers came to the center the same day. Some of them expressed their pain and sorrow about sons who had died in acts of violence or had been in jail, the need to leave their village to work in Caracas, leaving their children with caretakers, and the lack of community support. We will continue to do activities with these women and hope to create a support network for them.
Centro Madre's second major project is the holistic farm that provides income for the center and is an educational model for small-scale sustainable agriculture. In the last four months we have harvested papaya, lemons, yucca (manioc, cassava), mangos, soursop, bananas, vegetables and 200 kilograms of pure honey.
On Earth Day a pre-school class visited the project to see, touch and learn about organic agriculture. They smelled the different medicinal plants, they collected eggs laid by our hens, they watched as cassava was harvested and planted, and they got to know Cayena, our three-legged turtle. We read them the story The Earth and I by Frank Asch.
CIARA of the Ministry of Agriculture (previously having hailed the project as a national model of small-scale sustainable agriculture) continues their assistance with weekly visits by a skilled agronomist. CATA (the agricultural department of the municipality) gave us the free use of a tractor to plow the land. Now that the one-year drought is over, we have started to replant cassava, corn, vegetables, fruit trees and one hectare of plantain. Now we are regularly selling in natural food stores dried neem leaves, lemon grass tea, dried bananas, granola and honey under the VitaLotus label.
Thanks to a group of supporters, enough money was donated to buy and install two water tanks on our roof, construct a grey-water recycling tank and expand our irrigation system. When donors morally support our vision, mission and goals and demonstrate their belief in us with financial support, we make tremendous leaps forward. We very faithfully guarantee that every donation received for a specific project is spent in exactly the way it was intended. Every bit of support we receive, large or small, monetary or
spiritual, makes a difference.
Directed by Didi Ananda Sadhana for the last 10 years, Centro Madre is in Barlovento, Venezuela, two hours by bus from Caracas. Starting in February 2009, a very intense effort has been undertaken to develop a self-reliant, integrated farm at Centro Madre. Our goal is both to create a regular source of income from a wide variety of agricultural products and to educate the local community about the principles and practices of small-scale organic agriculture.
Our project is inspired by the following words of Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar: "Self-reliance is the main objective of our farming projects, hence they should be oriented towards production. They should not be dependent on outside resources. An integrated approach to farming should include such areas as agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, sericulture, lac culture, apiculture, dairy farming, animal husbandry, irrigation, pisciculture, pest control, the proper use of fertilizers, cottage industries, energy production, research centres and water conservation. This approach will help make farming projects self-reliant, and should be adopted.”
The Prout Research Institute of Venezuela recently produced for the Journal of Labor and Society a comprehensive article summarizing Prout (the Progressive Utilization Theory, an socio-economic model for economic democracy and social justice).
Paraguay
Dada Ratnananda is giving philosophy and yoga classes to martial arts students in Asunción. He organized a yoga seminar in which 25 people participated. Our school and medical center is now receiving support from the local government, and after attending several lectures, the Vice-Minister of Culture and Religions in Paraguay learned meditation.
Didi Sutanuka has been giving monthly Neohumanist Education training to teachers at the NH school in Capiata. In order to raise funds for the school she conducted two vegetarian dinners, in which more than 200 people participated. Didi recently approached a hospital to experiment with preventative yoga therapy. There has been a very enthusiastic response from the patients. The Paraguay Ministry of Education sponsored the First International Congress on Values, called Life with Dignity and Education, in October at the Universidad Americana in Asunción, led by the Vice-Minister of Culture and Religions, Hugo Brítez Ibarra, who previously learned Ananda Marga meditation. More than 1,000 people attended. Vice-President Frederico Franco and Minister of Education Dr. Luis Alberto Riart addressed the congress and later greeted each of the Ananda Marga acaryas. Along with the leaders and adepts of major religions, Ananda Marga was given the highest respect by the conference organizers. Dada Paradevananda led a workshop called Spirituality: The Base of Life, assisted by Didi Sutanuka and Dada Ratnananda. He also led the closing ecumenical prayer to the entire plenary, explaining and then singing the Samgacchadhvam mantra.
Dada Maheshvarananda gave a workshop in the main auditorium to more than 150 people called Prout: A Holistic Alternative Model for the Welfare of All. During a television news interview, he said, "This is a very historic gathering because it draws attention to the truth that we are all part of one human family, irregardless of different beliefs."
A stand of Ananda Marga books and leaflets was supervised by Indranath and Niliima, and Sister Malinii cooked and sold delicious vegetarian food both days of the event, and at the end donated the profits to the Master Unit of Dada Divyasvarupananda.
The margiis were asked to sing kiirtan during a formal reception for the international visitors in the building of the national legislature.
Dada Japeshvarananda and Shaktideva, who worked very hard in the planning and organizing of Ananda Marga's participation, also set up a public lecture, After Capitalism: Prout, in which thirty enthusiastic participants learned about the biopsychology of cooperation and cooperative games.
Brazil
The 19th anniversary of our school at the MU has recently been celebrated. The school was renovated, with 10 computers along with chairs and tables donated by the municipality. In the coming month we will have an Internet center that will serve the local community of Vila Sao Francisco.
Dada Vidyananda gave two workshops on Emotional Clearing in Rio de Janeiro and Campinas. Dada Siddheshvarananda gave six lectures and a workshop in Rio de Janeiro and nearby towns. A total of 135 people attended. After one of the lectures in Cabo Frio he was interviewed by a local TV station. On the occasion of Prabhat Samgiita Day, kiirtan and Prabhat Samgiita were performed by our school children. More than 100 people attended the program and it was published in the local newspaper. After that, Dada participated in an interreligious rally in Rio de Janeiro, being interviewed by three TV channels that covered the event.
Dada Haripranananda gave a lecture at the University of Brasilia, which 50 people attended, out of which 15 decided to join his ongoing yoga class. As a result of this program he now lectures twice a week at the university about health and yoga. Several cooking classes and vegetarian dinners took place, the proceedings of which are going to be used to renovate the jagrti in Celandia/Brasil.
Dada Jinanendra gives regular Tantra, yoga and philosophy classes at the University of Machnos in Paranaguá. Dada's Bakery is becoming very popular in the surrounding area.
Dada Vishvodbhashananda gave several lectures and workshops in Campinas, Brasilia, São Paulo and Teresópolis on Prout, health and deep relaxation. More than 75 people attended.
Dada Pranadiiptananda participated in the Interreligious Forum in Brasilia, during which he gave several workshops. He was well received there, with two local TV channels interviewing him.
