Dear Sangha,
We offer you another newsletter with some bits of inspiration from friends who are working to bring the vision of the Open Centre to life. I've been amazed and touched by the creative fundraising ideas that continue to arise. In this newsletter we'll hear from Alison on how her research at the University of Edinburgh will benefit the Open Centre. Ariane shares with us about the Conference she gave on Open Dharma in Quebec and a particularly unique idea she came up with for raising money! First, here's an update from Jaya on the search for a property...
In our continued search for more affordable properties, one of the properties we have found is 19 Hectares in Andalucia (1 1/2 hours from the Malaga airport) on the edge of a Biosphere Reserve... The (still too-high-for-our-budget-at-this-point) price of 620,000 Euros includes an old monastery transformed into an eco-friendly meditation and yoga center with solar power, huts, tipis, mountain spring water.... We continue looking, but just wanted to share a glimpse of what is out there.
-------
ALISON'S UNIVERSITY RESEARCH
I am a research student at the University of Edinburgh with a love and appreciation of Open Dharma, and hope for Open Centre. One way I thought I could help was through my research. I currently research distance healing with people who have arthritis. I have offered the participants compensation for the time that it takes to participate in the study, and I would like to also give them the choice of donating their compensation to charity. My academic supervisor liked the idea and suggested an arthritis charity, my thought was to support both the "arthritis" and "healing" aspects of the study by splitting any donations to both an arthritis charity and Open Dharma. I feel it is appropriate, as the Open Centre will encourage healing on many levels.
Each participant is offered 15 pounds, so for each person that donates, 7.50 will go towards Open Centre. There are 60 participants in this study, and another 60 in a future study. It's not a huge amount, but I am grateful to be able to share the opportunity to be generous with so many people who otherwise may not know about Open Dharma and the Open Centre.
with a hopeful heart,
Alison Easter
-------
ARIANE'S CONFERENCE AND NEW IDEA
The conference was really great. About 25 persons were there, all news faces except one old friend that reappeared there. I felt people interested and capivated. The Center which invited me seemed to really appreciate it also and encouraged me to do more conferences in others centers. I talked about this bridge between retreat life and normal life in introducing some parts of the wonderful letter that Jaya wrote about her pregancy and it seems that people reacted positivly to it. People asked many nice questions and at the end we had an exchange, especially about how to bring this practice into sexuality. So, I'm really really happy about it and serouisly think to ask more centers and give this conference again. It was a nourishing experience for me...and hopefully for all the others around.
(Ariane donated her pay for the conference entirely to the Open Centre.)
Ariane also had the brilliant idea of participating in a TV game show (the kind of TV shows that we see a lot in North-America where you can win a car, a vacation, or lots of money for being the most intelligent, quickest or silliest) to earn money for the Open Centre. There is a TV show in Québec called "Le Banquier" and the maximum possible gain is $500,000! Unfortunately she was too late to audition for this year's season, but will remember it for next year.
------
If you'd like further inspiration on ways to help support the creation of the Open Centre please refer to the "How to Help" page at: http://www.opencentre.es/howhelp.html There are some really fantastic ideas here!
With joy and love,
Erika (and the Newsletter Team)
Please share you ideas and events with the sangha by sending them to: newsletter (AT) opencentre.es
