SEVA TIMESM o n t h l y R e p o r t O f Y LT P S e r v i c e A c t i v i t i e s F r o m A c r o s s T h e N a t i o n

August 2014

Vishnu Manoharan &Unnikrishnan Vijayan Pillai Sabarimala: Around 900 people joined a project to clean the holy Pamba River in Sabarimala under the guidance and support of Art of Liv-ing. Many tons of waste and garbage were removed from the river. The garbage taken out was disposed of by SSS team (Sabarimala Sanitation So-ciety) in collaboration with the police department.

Sabarimala pilgrims dump plas-tic, clothes and food materials into the river. While the whole river is lit-tered with garbage, the starting point of the pilgrimage where devotees take a dip is the worst affected. The Pamba River clean up project has so far fo-cused on that 500m stretch of the river.

Recently an elephant died in Peri-yar Tiger Reserve. The post-mortem revealed huge piles of waste in the body of the elephant, including poly-thene bags, aluminum foil and wrap-pers in her abdomen. Forest experts said the waste must have come from the litter that pilgrims leave behind during the two-month long Sabari-mala season.

Initiative for revival of the Pamba River by art of living volunteers took place under the guidance of Vinod R Nayar, YLTP State Cordinator, Kera-la. Started on April 13, the clean-up will be done every month in the pres-ence of devotees so that awareness level is raised. Five phases have been completed.

First phase was taken up by 450 YLTP volunteers and involved eight hours continuous service starting

with puja and ending with a satsang in which bhajans were sung. A Pamba Aarthi was also performed, says Sri Vava Suresh, Art of Living teacher of advance courses who inaugurated the programme.

He said that His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar expressed his concern about the river to Kerala chief min-ister Oomen Chandy when he meet him recently. This inspired the clean-up project, says Suresh.

In the first phase, volunteers did a survey to see what sort of garbage had been dumped and arranged for clean-ing equipment. The campaign started on the holy day of ‘Arattu’ ceremony, one of the prime concluding rituals of the annual festival at the Lord Ayyap-pa temple. Devaswam Dept provided food and accommodation for volun-teers for three days.

On May 11 around 270 art of liv-ing volunteers again got together for the second phase of cleaning. “We formed groups of five plus members and started cleaning from different portions of the river,” said Venu Kail-sam, a volunteer.

A volunteer Dr. Jecob says, “Lit-ter-free holy rivers is a vision of His Holiness Sri Sri Ravisankar. YLTP has

taken up this vision.”“We are really thankful to the

AOL volunteers for their effort to clean up this mess. It was a hard re-ality the pilgrims considers Pamba a holy river but they are contaminating the river by dumping the materials. The cleaning process was an eye-opener for us,” said Manimaran, soft-ware engineer from Tamilnadu.

During the fourth and fifth phas-es of the cleaning, the monsoon had started. The river was swelling and the depth had increased. Volunteers braved the weather and went ahead with the cleaning.

A systematic approach was un-dertaken in the cleaning. The ex-act locations of waste disposal were mapped and cleaning was concen-trated in those areas. This contributed to the success of the ongoing pro-gramme.

Vinod.R. Nair and Vava Suresh were present at Pamba for coordinat-ing the volunteers and under their ef-fective management the team served as a catalyst for social change.

Marthandan AOL volunteer and YLTP graduate, says “We are happy to be a part of the great movement. Thanks to Guruji for giving us a

chance to be the instrument in imple-menting his vision.”

“An awareness programme has been started for pilgrims from Tamil-nadu, Karnataka, Andhra and Kerala. The clean up project is itself an educa-tion for pilgrims who see volunteers at work,” says Sriprakash, Kerala State Executive Member of YLTP.

Cleaning will happen every month; Includes awareness programme

Clean-up drive at holy Pamba River in Sabarimala: 27 tons of litter removed so far

Dilip Kumar Kohli

Bengaluru: The Art of Living under the aegis of Volunteer For A Better India launched ‘Enhancing Green Cover’ phase of the Kumudvathi Riv-er Rejuvenation Project on Sunday which envisages increasing the green cover by planting 1 lakh saplings in the river basin over a period of one year.

Launching this initiative, more than 700 saplings of local varieties like atti ashwatha, ala, gone, nerale, halasu, maavu were planted by 800 volunteers on Sunday.

“Increased tree population along the river course will give twin ben-efits of soil erosion control as well as increase in soil moisture. About 1000 trees in each of the village will increase the green cover and bring resultant benefits. Local varieties of trees, and those giving some income

to the villagers will be propagated. Already 2,350 saplings have been planted by volunteers and farmers in the basin,” said Dr. Lingaraju, Project Co-ordinator.The ‘‘Kumudvathi River Rejuvena-tion’ plan is a 3-year program, envis-aged under the ‘Volunteer for a Better

India’ program, to revive this endan-gered waterway that could potentially address a part of Bangalore’s water needs. Over 270 villages lining the river basis will benefit.

In the past four months, five water recharge wells have been con-structed in Srinvivasapura, Kerekatti-

ganur, Kambalu, Soldevana Halli and Yentagana Halli. 74 Boulder Checks in first level stream of river have been constructed, 18 kalyanis [step wells] have been cleaned, and 2350 saplings have been planted in 7 villages.

The project volunteers are taking several other measures to promote environment sustainability. Numer-ous awareness sessions are being held for women and children in making the villages clean of plastic.

Health camps organised in the villages has been of help to women and children from the villages. Vol-unteers have been devoting their time every Sunday to volunteer at the catchment area to breathe life into the river.

Robert Bosch association joined hands with Art of Living by donating Rs 14.40 lakh as financial support on 5th June 2014 after seeing the work done by volunteers.

Kumudvathi rejuvenation moves to second phaseGreen cover of 1 lakh saplings to be planted at the river basin

Pure again Work happening at Kumudvathi

Pilgrim’s progress Around 900 volunteers have worked so far at the Pamba clean-up

Pure again Garbage removal

H H Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Rivers are considered very sacred in our culture. All our civilization grew on the banks of the rivers. England civilization grew on the banks of river Thames, in Germany it grew on the banks of river Rhine, all the castles are near river Rhine. So water is important to life. Without wa-ter there is no life. All over the world, in ancient times people had cities built on the banks of the rivers.

In this country, all sacred penance also happened on the banks of the riv-ers. Each river is known for its own special events, like Ganga is known for knowl-edge. All the Rishi Munis did tapasya on the banks of Ganga. All the love stories blossomed on the banks of Yamuna. Sri Krishna played Rasa Leela on the banks of Yamuna. Narmada River is known for bhakti (devotion), knowledge and logic. Saraswati River is known for brilliance or architecture. Sindhu is known for its own special culture; the Sindhi culture blos-somed on the Sindh river banks.

Brahmaputra River is the only male river, All other rivers are female. Because Brahmaputra was not gentle at all, it was never gentle, it was always a rogue river. It would change its course and cause so much sorrow so Brahmaputra was called a male river, a very arrogant, adamant river.

So like that rivers are considered sa-cred and people never used to pollute rivers. When they go to rivers they would first bow down to the rivers and put their feet there but they would never spit in the river water.

Even today villagers don’t spit in the river Ganga, so you don’t pollute the riv-er. People would never urinate in the riv-ers, they would go away for the urination and when they come to the river they consider the water very sacred. When-ever you consider something sacred you preserve it, you honor it, and you see that you don’t pollute it. Today that is not the case.

We have forgotten that and we throw everything in the river. What all people throw into the river, we must not do such things, we need to keep the river pure. All the dirt of the city is thrown into the river. From Gangotri, the Ganga River, by the time it reaches Kanpur, it becomes very dirty, not just Kanpur, even before that. After Haridwar the water is not clean enough to put it in our mouth, to drink it is not possible, that is what has happened. We must not do this, Plastics, cloths, and all these things we must not put in the river.

Lifelines ofthe nation

Pamba River

Seva Times2

Malappa D. Belamge

Karnataka: The river Vedavati flows from Hoskote village to Andhra Pradesh. It had a lot of water before and around 49 vil-lages were depending on this river, There are a total of about 40,000 people in 9,000 families. Now as the river dried up these people are facing water crises. Even bore wells of the area have dried up. All this happened be-cause the river had no flowing water and the groundwater got depleted.

To increase the water level and to meet the needs of the people of these villages Veda-vati river restoration project was started by Karnataka govern-ment in colaboration with Art of Living. Some recharge wells have been built so far.

A resident of the affected village, Lakhya Hobali says that his bore well has dried up as the water level went down but since this rejuvenation is going on his bore well also has water now. He considers this as a very useful project and in future it will help the farmers more, he says.

A large number of Nilgiri trees, which consume a lot of groundwater, had grown on the river bed. These trees were uprooted and thousands of saplings of trees like peepal, banyan, neem, jackfruit and pongemia were planted in the surroundings. Boulder checks were constructed to control soil

erosion and improve soil mois-ture retention.

These and a variety of other measures taken soon resulted in raised ground water levels and revival of surface water. The whole bio-diversity of the area is on the path to recovery, the pro-ject coordinator Nagaraj says. Among the main works is building of recharge wells which will store rain water and help ground water levels increase. The whole project will be com-pleted by 2017.

The river Vedavati

THE ART OF LIVING, AUGUST 2014

‘You saved our lives’ says flood victimSanjivani Warkade

Akola, Maharashtra: Art of living volunteers were among those who provided selfless service to those affected by the flood in River Poor-na in four villages of Maharashtra (Kaajali, Deruwada, Bramhan-wada and Belmaandi). The villages are in the districts of Ankola and Amaravati. Yuvacharyas worked for 40 days after the floods struck in July. These villages were filled with water and rubble, many houses broke down and many people lost their lives. Around 130 families were affected, many people were buried in the rubble. Volunteers helped in digging those stuck under the rubble. On Sunday in Kajali village around 50 volunteers and Yuvacharyas removed buried belongings of the affected families. Around 1400 people were liv-ing in Kajali. Volunteers helped set up shelters and provided food and cooking vessels and stoves so they could cook and survive. Villagers vere given meditation and trauma relief programs so that they could cope with the calamity. Next day volunteers cleaned the temple premises too. In another village called Brahmangaon with a population of 3,000, around 100 volunteers went to provide food, clothes and first aid to sick people.

Packed food was also provided to the villagers. The volunteers were able to salvage household things like cots, vessels and so on that were buried under the rubble. YLTP teacher Vyankatesh Mangalram with other nine teach-ers, yuvachaaryas and volunteers collected clothes and food from Amravati, Varud and Mozari for distribution here. This team was one of the earliest responders to the unfolding crisis. YLTP coordinator Vyankte-sha said that after this they are go-ing to plan medical camps in these villages to regain their health. Free Art of living programs were organ-ized to ensure their physical health and to deal with the emotional and trauma that villagers have gone through. Six Happiness programs, two Yltp and one Art Excel were conducted in Kajadi village. Villagers were thankful to Art of Living volunteers who helped them in their tough times irrespec-tive of their religion or caste. They helped to find our belongings from the rubble, says Varsha A Raut, a resident of the affected village. With tears in her eyes, another woman said that the volunteers had saved their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Around 27 villages were affect-ed by this flood. People lost their lives, near and dear ones, homes, assets, money, and all crops. So

the relief work will continue in the future too. This calamity happened because of excess rain in Madhya Pradesh.

Describing the flood in River Poorna, villagers said a big wave with a length of 15 feet came with

high speed. The shutters of the Ka-joi dam were opened as a result. When the flood came it was 11am on Sunday. Houses were filled with water for two hours. Some 200 houses were affected in Brahman-wada and Kajoi.

Moreshwar, who lives in Brahman-wada, says his house and onion crop were damaged. Only 10 quin-tal onions were left. “We tried to salvage the good ones but couldn’t because of the bad smell. Yuvacha-ryas help1ed to do this. We were

able to sell them in the market and make some money.”

Binay Deshmukh, the village policeman, said, “We will arrange free Art of Living workshops for af-fected people. We are also planning to build new houses for them.”

Dilip Kumar Kohli Navasri, Gujarat: At Rangapur tribal village of Gujarat in Dun-gri Falia, Navasri district, Art of Living yuvacharyas built and set up 14 gobar gas plants. Women of this village were going to the forest to bring wood for fuel. Thus took 3-4 hours daily, apart from that a lot of trees were cut and the smoke from the wood fire was affecting their health too.

Now they are saving a lot of time and energy, and spending more time in the fields. Earlier the kids’ studies were affected as the women had to go to the forest and keep their children at

home to finish the works or to take care of their younger ones, says a school going girl of the vil-lage. But now she is a regular in

the school and gets time to study at home too.

But initially it was not easy for the art of living volunteer

who initiated this project and convinced each family to pro-vide the cow dung and to carry forward the plan. But she didn’t give up. Art of Living donated Rs 3,000 per plant. Villagers gave their free labour. For raw mate-rials, villagers got soft loans and with that the total construction costs were met, says Ramanbhai Dungri who has benefited from the project.

Another beneficiary said that earlier it used to take a long time to prepare tea but now cooking has become so easy and a lot of time that used to go in collecting wood has been saved. The go-bar gas plants have changed the quality of life of villagers.

Gobar gas plants in Gujarat

Boon for Odisha’s govt projects Binayakumar Sahoo

Cuttack: In Odisha, the YLTP pro-gramme is being offered as part of a government programme to train Bharat Nirman Volunteers as part of a Community Government Partnership Initiative. The eight-day residential training program of BNVs/YLTPs was facilitated in Sri Sri University, Cuttack by Sri Sri Publication Trust (SSPT/Art of Living). Held from 17th to 24th July, it was attended by some 100 participants from Kalahandi dis-trict. The Art of Living Teachers took classes on yoga, aerobics and emotions handling, and inspired everyone about the spirit of seva. Speakers from the government gave lectures on various govern-ment programmes that they can take up.

The government’s plan is to

train a cadre of volunteers on flag-ship government programmes which would include training on ethical aspects and establishing of model villages. This residen-tial training program was inaugu-rated by the district project coor-dinator of BNV project Ms Sarita

Kanungo. Bholanath Jena, the state teacher coordinator, Himansu Pan-da, the senior teacher, Lokhimani Jena, a senior teacher from Art of Living Foundation were there on this special occasion.

The sessions would start at 6am with yoga, aerobics and asanas

till 8.30. After breakfast, the ses-sions focused on developing com-munity development, mobilization and social leadership skills. Motiva-tional films, inspiring videos on so-cial initiatives were also shown. In the evening sessions, participants took part in cultural activities.

‘Govt. schemes and programs’ A talk by former additional secretary of general ad-ministration department

River Poorna’s fury Flood relief work at Kajoi, Akola district of Maharashtra

Clean fuel No need to cut wood in Rangapur, Navasri dt

Thousands benefit Collaboration with Karna-taka government

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Kadu krushi training programme Malappa D. Belamge

In many places, the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has brought down the soil fertility. As a result, farmers are not able to grow more than one crop in a year. Agricultural scientist Dr Khadar said farmers should do Kadu Krishi method so soil fertility can improve. He said this during a training programme con-ducted near Hirejwaja gate in Chi-kamagalur.

In the training programme, Dr Khadar taught the theory behind the method as well as gave a practi-cal demonstration. More than 200 farmers attended the workshop after which they said they will adopt the method.

Kadu Krishi (forest farming) is similar to organic farming but a little different in that forest soil is used to prepare the manure.

Dr Khader demonstrated how to make the manure. First, 500 gram of forest soil, 20 litres of water, mono-cotes fluor 500 gram, dicotes fluor 500 gram are mixed together. That soil pot is put in the earth for five days. The pot is opened once every day for the five day period.

After five days, 20 litres of liquid manure is mixed with 500 to 1,000 li-tres of water and sprayed on the soil. This helps to improve soil fertility.

The liquid costs Rs 100 to make.The liquid manure should be

sprayed in the evening or during the rains as the best time to spray is when the temperature is cool.

Rekha Huliyappa Gowda, mem-ber of Zilla Parishad, Chikmagalur, DM Shankar, president of VVKI Chikmagalur district, scientiest Dr Khadar, Anirudh Narahari, Zilla development officer, Nagaraj G. at-tended the programme.

THE ART OF LIVING, AUGUST 2014

Organic farmers market Rajesh Kundu

Raanchi, Jharkhand: Sri Sri farmers market selling only organic pro-duce was launched by SSIAST (Sri Sri Institute of Agriculture Science and Technology Trust) and YLTP (Youth leadership Training Pro-gram) in Ranchi on August 3, 2014. Similar markets were started in four more places: Siligudi, Surat, Pune, and Bhopal.

Initially this market will func-tion once a week but as more farm-ers take up organic farming and production picks up, the market will function more often.

Organic farmers markets are the need of the hour since the use

of pesticides and fertilizers is taking a toll on peoploe’s health and farm productivity.

Six years of hard work helped

farmers take up organic farming at Namkum block in Ranchi, More than 150 farmers are now grow-ing vegetables using organic farm-

ing methods in some 70 acres of land in Hahap, Libudih, Hesapiri, Huangatu, Maraburu, Sukridih, Rurunkocha, Bundubera and so on

the block. All the villages are situ-ated in hilly, forest-covered area.

The market is around 35-40 km from the villages and 10 km from Namkum block. Farmers have dis-covered that their fertilizer costs have come down by 90%.

Art of Living teachers trained the farmers in making jevamrit and bijamrit. Jevamrit is made us-ing besan (gram flour), jaggery (molasses), cow urine, dung, soil of banyan tree and water. It is used to keep alive the micro-organizm under the soil. Bijamrit is made using cow urine, water, dung, lime and soil, and is used while pro-ducing seeds. The farmers took Navachetna Shivir and have been trained by AOL teachers Ashim and Subhas Mahato. Use of chemi-cal fertilizers and pesticides has led to health problems among consum-ers. Heavy use of chemical fertiliz-ers can damage the crops. It can kill the beneficial micro-organisms that live in the soil and play a vital role in the improvement of the soil quality are also killed with insects.

Ther project was executed in several phases. Firstly the farmers were given training on chemical-free farming. Initially, when farm-

ers start chemical-free farming the output can come down resulting in

losses to farmers. To help offset this loss, a special market is needed so that the farmers can get the right price for the crop. In the farmers market, the farmers sell their pro-duce directly to customers, which means there are no middlemen making profits. This and a fair price for the produce can help compen-sate farmers for any reduction in production.

Ashim Kundu, Art of living teacher and volunteer, said that cus-tomers who normally go to other markets are turning to organic farmers market. They are aware of the importance of this market which is providing them organic vegetables at the same price as pro-duce from chemical farming.

Neha Budhia, a housewife who came to the market, said that the production of organic vegetables should increase. She wanted a Sri

Sri Farmers market near her home in Kanke, Ranchi.

An Intelligence Bureau officer recently transferred from Delhi said that “one market in a week is not sufficient for those customers who have already tasted organic veggies. They don’t want to go for produce from regular farms and therefore at least twice or thrice a wekk the market has to meet. Ashim Kundu, the local coordinator of this project, said, “We are now looking to launch the market in Kanke and Kantatoli town in Ranchi by December.” .

New ways Ashim Kundu, AOL teacher, teaching organic farming in Namkum block

No chemicals Sri Sri Farmers market was launched on August 3

Left - Organic farming using drip irrigation. Right - Vermi Compost

Organic amrapali mangoes

CLEAN START

Sanjivani Warkade

Aagar,Akola: A Goshala (cow shed) has been es1tablished and started in Aagar village by a group of vol-unteers. This is not only saving the

lives of these cows, but is helping in preparing organic pesticides, fer-tilizers and compost solutions to save crops from insects and other diseases.

This cow shed is running for past four years. Number of cows has increased from 5 to 70, says Kishor Kholeji ( YLTP yuvachraya). He got inspired to establish this goshala, because of dissemination of hybrid cows, the number of desi cows went down. People didn’t want to buy these cows even for free. These cows were sold to slaughter houses. This cow-shed is keeping all the cows that were earlier sold to be killed Today villag-ers bring their cows here instead of sending them to slaughterhouses.

The cow shed was established with the support and help of the vil-lagers. Vitthal S. Chikate, caretaker

of cows, says he is happy working here and is paid well. He has been there since the goshala was estab-lished and he has seen it growing from five to 70 cows.

He collects the cow urine and

dung to refine and prepare fertiliz-ers and organic pesticides. Its com-post solution is used to save crops from insects.

Similarly, more goshalas have been started in Bhusawal and Pune. The plan to develop one center that will be a shelter for desi cows and where organic farming will also be taught.

Initiative to save desi cows in Maharashtra

“Agriculture is the backbone of human existence. For any civilization to prosper, agriculture has to be healthy and sustainable. We need to get our focus back on agriculture which is the primary industry. Our earth has plenty for everyone. We only have to manage its resources well. ” - H. H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Chatra, Jharkhand: Volunteers of The Art of Living Chatra organized a plantation drive at Durga Mandap Parisad at Unta More on 23rd August.

Since the beginning, trees have fur-nished us with two of life’s essentials, food and oxygen. They provide necessities such as shelter, medicine and tools. Today, their value continues to increase and more ben-efits of trees are being discovered as their role expends to satisfy the needs created by our modern lifestyle. Therefore, Upendrar Kumar Verma and Sham Kumar Verma with 100 AOL and non-AOl volunteers organ-ized a plantation drive at Durga Mandap Parisad. They planted 251 saplings like Lak-shmitaru, Pipal, Mango and Ashoka. Upen-dra said, “We know the importance of this event. We will monitor all the saplings peri-odically.”

“The Art of Living has always exhibited commitment to save the environment from further degradation. On this world environ-ment day, the organization planted 2014 saplings at Bengaluru in their own ashram land and it is now time for us to pick our gar-den and sapling to reassert our continued support to save the environment.” said AOL teacher and mentor of this event Deepak Kumar.

Among the volunteers Dilip Kumar, Manish Kumar, Satish, Kumar, Rakesh (Bijli Rani), Upendar Dangi, Ranjan Kumar, Khus-bu Varma, Payel Varma, Khusbu Rajak, Nit-ish, Kajal, Renu, Sonali, Baleshwar and Ra-hul took part in the event.

Rajesh Kundu

Tree plantation in Jharkhand

Dr Khadar’s demonstration Heritage 70 desi cows are sheltered in goshala in Aagar

Dr Khadar giving a talk Making the liquid manure

Kerala: Thousands Art of Living Volunteers of Kerala planted a large number of saplings all over Kerala on the day of Gurupoornima. The project is known as Haritha Bhar-atham.

Unnikrishnan Vijayan Pillai

Greening withLakshmitaru

5H in Bangalore slum

Sri Sri Gnan Mandir in Kalahandi

Malappa D. Belamge

Bengaluru: The Art of Living has been working among slumdwellers in Bengaluru. Seven yuvacharyas have been working in 6 slum ar-eas. The main works being under-taken are Sri Shakthi Mahila Sosaya Sangha, computer training, tailoring classes and Art of Living courses, Art of Living teacher Geetha Shetty.

Sri Shakthi Mahila Sosaya Sang-ha and Sri Sri Yoga are happening in Goripalya slum areas. There are a total of seven sanghas, or groups, for some 120 women here. The train-ing will be for six months. After six months, the sangha members will get loans of up to five times their savingts from Corporation Bank. Sangha members started their own businesses like canteens, cloth shops and incense making units. In this slum area till now 30 people have done sri sri yoga course. 950 people have done part 1 courses, and 48 people have done YLTP course under of the Geetha setty.

Computer training courses are also happening in Magadi, Laxi-manpur, Srirampur, Uttharahalli and TCM Rao slum areas. More than 100 students are learning computer skills in Sri Sri Academy of Vocational Ed-

ucation right now. Students learn accounting soft-

ware in the class. More than 150 peo-ple took this class last year. Out of this more than 20 are employed such

as in call centres, says yuvacharya Khali Huchaiah.

Two yuvacharas are taking yoga class in Shubha High school to 90-100 students.

Binay Kumar Sahoo

Odissa: Si Sri Gyan Mandir is pro-viding free education to children re-gardless of their caste, creed or their religion. Not only education but also the school is providing free dresses, shoes, school bags,books and station-ary with midday meals. The school at Tambachchada has been functioning for four years, serving more than 100 students coming from poor families.

This school was started by The Art of living organization with the purpose of giving quality education to the deprived sections of the soci-ety. Tambachhada is a small village of Dharamgarh block of Kalahandi dis-trict in Odisha having a population of more than 1400. The main occupa-

tion of the people of this village is farming. Villagers are not financially very sound, so their children can’t think of quality education. Govern-ment schools of the village lack sev-eral basic facilities. Sri Sri Gnan Man-dir has come as a solution to all these

problems.Parents of the students are also

happy to have such a school in the village, as the school is giving quality education for free. Apart from aca-demic education, moral values and yoga are included in the curriculum.

With cultural activities and sports all round development of the student is possible. Laxman Mashra, (40), says,”Our children are getting a great educa-tion here due to the efforts put in by teacherfs. Two more schools are also there in other parts of the state. One is in Tarapur of Kalahandi district, where some 100 students are getting education . Another one is in Limser village of Kalahandi district, where more than 120 students are studying. All three schools celebrated their annual functions with fanfare and presented different cultural events. Parents and villagers were invited for the program. Villagers enjoyed the program and students also got en-couragement and exposure.

Sangli: In Banali village of San-gli district, Maharashtra deprived children are getting free education in a Sri Sri Vidya Mandir. Most of the students are from working class families of the village. This school is running successfully for the past four years, now it has more than 200 students enrolled.

Another such school has also started where around 130 students are studying. In these schools apart from the studies all round develop-ment is done. Physical exercise and yoga are taught to ensure the health of students. Midday meals, free books and uniforms are also pro-vided. These facilities help to ensure retention of students.

Gauri Shitole

Solar lights up Nilgiri tribals’ lives

Below: Yuvacharya Rajesh with Sarpanch

Thambacchada schoolLimser school

Tribal Houses at Kadamban Kombai Village

Gurucharan Amreshvar

Nilgiris: Kadamban Kombai, a village in the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu surrounded by forests, was unlit and had no electric connection, until a team of Art of Living yuvacharyas led by Rajesh, went to the rescue of the people. “The village is 1500 feet from the sea level so it is hard to reach and as the village is surrounded by forests, they always fear animal attack. El-ephants and bears visit frequently. Their livelihood comes from agricul-ture, they excel in orange, chilly and spinach cultivation,” said Moorthy the forest ranger. The electric poles and wires can’t be taken to this height as there are no roads. The village has 25 houses and none of them have lights. The yuvacharyas conducted a detailed survey about the amount of electricity needed for the village.

“The project started in June. As access to the village is restricted for security reasons, we got the permission of the forest rangers. All the 25 houses in the villages will soon be provided solar-powered lamps. We also have trained the youth of the village for the maintenance of equipment,” said

Rajesh, the team leader. Like this, many other villages nearby will also be seeing the light. “The village was in a restricted area. We got permission from the forest ranger. Whenever we go to that vil-lage one forest guard come with us for security purpose,” said Rajesh.

On Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s birthday, the Art of Living family in Chandrapur organised a health camp at Indiranagar, Mul Road on May 12, 2014. Volunteers also took up a cleaning project at a government hospital on May 14. More than 200 benefited from the health camp. Doctors found that 68 of the participants had high blood pressure, 34 had low blood pressure and some 85 could have high sugar problems. Medicines were distributed to patients free of cost.

A team of four doctors from the gov-ernment hospital and five from private hos-pital attended the camp. The camp was inaugurated by Dr. Kamdi.

After the camp, volunteers did seva at Government Hospital Chandrapur and cleaned up the whole area. Sanjeevani Warkade

Health camp in Chandrapur

Desi Cows

To raise awareness among villageres about the endangered desi cows, a procession was carried out in Nasarpur, Pune by YLTP course participants. Villagers from Naigon, Degaon, Bhor and Bande Wadi partici-pated in this awareness program. After the procession, participants took an oath to save desi cows. The program was coordi-nated by Sangeeta Jamdade and Nanda Veer with Yuavacharyas, Tanaji, Shivaji, Shivram, Praveen, Akshay and Shamal. Gajanan Navatre

Assam: Klurbung village is a remote area of Karbi Anglong district in Assam which has no power. People here use kerosene lamps for which they have to go to the town to get kerosene. In 2012, YLTP took upon the project of installing solar power plants. The rural development project is an initiative of the Bangalore ashram. Assam was the first state that was adopted for the project. In that project 60 houses were fitted with solar power lamps. Now yuvacharyas are plan-ning to install solar lights in 100 other houses in nearby villages. “Light has come to our lives. Because of solar lights my children can study at night,” said Beena Rongpipi, a resident of Klurbung village. By Kumlin Engtipi

From darkness to light in Karbi Anglong

Seva Times4 THE ART OF LIVING, AUGUST 2014

Yuacharyas working in six slum areas

Sanjivani Warkade

Bhandara, Maharashtra: Sixteen people donated blood and 45 peo-ple did their health check up at Bhandara. In honour of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s birthday, the Art of Living family at Bhandara organised a blood dona-tion camp and free medical health check-up at Tavepaar gram-panchay-at hall. In this camp 16 people donated their blood and 45 people did their health check up. Medicines were dis-tributed free of cost. A special team comprising Dr Ashish Ujawane, Dr Aparna Rangaari and their as-sistant from Government Hospital Bhandara conducted the camp. Swamini Hemangi thanked each blood donor by giving a rose flower. After the camp, AOL volunteer Birdi Lahoti distributed biscuits and samo-sas to children of Tavepaar village. Hemangi took the lead for this camp along with their AOL YLTP (Youth Leadership Training Pro-gram) teacher Sangeeta Choudhari and volunteers Dr. Dinesh Hajare, Dr. Shubhangi Badole, Navneeth Golar, Paraag Dhomne, Sudhir Mate, Sachin Lede and others.

Blood donation

Work skills Computer training in Magadi slum area

Free schools in Sangli

Dilip Kumar Kohli

Gujarat: YLTP leaders of Gujarat have constructed more than 360 toilets under the Nirmal Bharat /Nirmal Gujarat Abhiyan. These toilets were built in different vil-lages of Omarpuda Thaluka in Surat district as per government plan.

YLTP volunteers went to these villages and convinced the villagers to contribute Rs 3000 in the form of labour for each toilet per household. Art of Liv-ing came up with a matching contribution of Rs 3000. With this amount these toilets were constructed, says Art of living Yuvacharya, Chandan Patel.

It was difficult for ladies in family suffering from diarrhea who used to wait till sunset so that they could go out to attend to nature’s call. The toilets con-structed due to Chandan’s initia-tive is a blessing for the women of the village, says Govind Bhai, a villager.

It was not easy for Chandan Patel. Initially they found it dif-ficult to convince the villagers to build a toilet after teaching them the art of living program. He conducted a workshop on the hygiene and health. Then only the villagers were ready to pay the money in the form of labour to build the toilets just near their houses.

Toilets ease women’s lives

Drought mitigation Yuvacharyas under the leadership of Shashank Khot, an Art of Living teacher, have arranged for drinking water tankers to around 16 villages of five tehsils in Sangli district, Maharashtra that are suffering from drought Gauri Shitole

Seva Times 5THE ART OF LIVING, AUGUST 2014

360 lives are uplifted

Volunteers at work

Volunteers in: Villagers practicing breathing excerises

Nitin Rode

Meenakshi Chauhan

Maharashtra: Nitin Rode comes from a Naxal-affected tribal area in Maharashtra. Growing up, he was always close to nature to love to have different animals as pets such as dogs, monkeys and even wild animals. But did not have a stable life as he didn’t com-plete his academics very well but worked in different companies. He took the Art of Living course through YLTP in the year of 2006. This programme changed his personal life and he found some direction.

A directionless youth not only found a direction to his life but was able to serve and bring some light in other people’s lives. The villages that he has been able to reach are Nizampur Takri, Rasulabagm, Rohana, Kautha railway, Sartha, Salpai, Pimbarda and Madala.

After doing the course, Rode came to Bangalore ashram where he attended a natural farming

training course along with par-ticipants from all over the coun-try. The programme was con-ducted by Dr Amol Palekar who is well known in this field.

After attending this pro-gramme, he started conducting his own natural farming training for farmers in his village along with the art of living free work-shop called Nav Chetna Shivir.

He says he didn’t give only theory class or the concept of

natural farming but if people would ask him to show he would walk to their fields and demon-strate things for them.

He has now farmers from more than 20 villages who have completely stopped using any pesticides on their crops but are planning to stop using fertilizers like Urea too. He adds that it’s not easy to stop using fertiliz-ers as the land is used to that. If the stopping is done suddenly then crop outout may drop by as much as 50%.

He himself has a farm of around three acres where his fa-ther was growing around one ton of row cotton every year,. Using natural farming the production increased by 1.5 to 2 times every year. For this he used organic pesticides which were developed in his own farm. After seeing the increase in his farm’s output, vil-lagers got inspired to adopt their methods. He started visiting dif-ferent villages to teach organic farming methods.

He himself started experi-menting and found that some specific trees like banyan tree and other traditional trees are very useful to the crops. He ex-plained to people that these trees help to retain the water in the soil even if the rains are down in that particular year. .

They started playing music for the crops which improved the production just as cows listening to the music started giving more milk.

He is planning to revive ancient medicine system by growing medicinal plants and developing moisturizers and medicines for different diseases. He says he found that a flower in a tree can yield a medicine that can help in diabetes. He has al-ready applied for a liscence to produce this medicine regularly. He is also planning on a skin cream that can help in getting rid of skin problems. He says he wants to stop people from using chemical cosmetics.

Nitin Rode: Organic farming preacher in tribal Maharashtra

Rajesh Kundu

Chatra, Jharkhand: 100 villag-ers were benefited when a dam was repaired by the initiative of Art of Living Volunteers during a Rural Happiness Program at Peska village of Chatra district. This dam was broken for past two years and was not benefit-ting the village, and there was a water scarcity in the village.

A happiness program was going on in the school prem-ises of the village where around 30 villagers were participating. Course participants were in-spired by Reena Renu, the pro-gram teacher, to take up this work.

When the work was started more villagers also joined in and

in a few hours the dam was ready to be filled in with fresh rain wa-ter.

Ramprawesh Kumar and Mutra Ranaji with Shrawan kumar Mahto and Ashoke

Dangi were among the villag-ers who did the work. They said it was a huge learnin for them that they could bring so much change by working to-gether in a group.

Broken dam restored in Jharkhand100 villagers benefited by the initiatives of AOL Volunteers

Started in 2011, Jojradih school now has nearly 200 students

Rajesh Kundu

Jhamshedpur: Naxal-affected village Jojradih in Jamshad dis-trict of Jharkhand has hope now. A school started by Art of Living volunteers in 2011 with only a few students now has 197 stu-dents.

This school was affected by Naxal attacks. Because of that no teacher was ready to come or visit this village. It was also sur-rounded by a thick forest filled with wild animals. .

There was no school and no-body could think of having an school. The village was cut off from rest of the world and no outsider visited the village. There was little flow of information from and to the outside world.

After Sri Sri visited the village and the school was started now the villagers have hope that the

coming generations will see a bet-ter future. And that they will get a chance to explore the world.

School kindles hopes in naxal-affected village

YLTP reforms alcoholic, spurs change in HPMeenakshi Chauhan

Shimla: A group of 20 YLTP graduates have been running a self-help group for the past seven years. For their honesty and initiative, they have won state-level awards from NAB-ARD. Their expertise is in pickle making, ancient and natural way of making flour, growing mush-rooms, and sweets.

Nand Lal, 35, was an alco-holic with a trouble married life and family problems when he did the course seven years back. He would drink the whole day

and feel miserable. His business wasn’t going well too because of his drinking habit. He would fight with customers.

After doing the program he left drinking alcohol, sent around 150 youth from his vil-lage and nearby to undergo the same programme. With the help of these youth he formed a self help group. The groups started making pickles and market-ing it with the help of Art of Living. He also ventured into mushroom cultivation. Mush-rooms can be grown in the win-ter in Himachal Pradesh. For

this they distributed the work among themselves.

The group also revived an old way of making flour with the help of a water flour mill. Now this network of self help groups is looking for loans or an invest-ment to expand their business. They also inspired the prisoners of Mandi jail to make jute bags that were marketed with the help of Art of Living.

Now they have linked up with 10 more self-help groups with the help of Nabard and are looking forward to getting a loan from Nabard.

Seva Times6 THE ART OF LIVING, AUGUST 2014

Smile in the face of villagers was brighter than the lamps that Art of Living lit in their housesDilip Kumar Kohli

Chamrajnagar, Karnataka: YLTP team has installed 160 so-lar lamps, seven street lights and a battery station in the village called Kanner colony in Billiran-ga Hills Of Chamrajnagar district in Karnatka. This is a remote vil-lage in the state. It is believed sandalwood smuggler Veerappan lived here and carried out his il-legal activities from here.

This project was completed in Januaury 11. 2014 by Sri Sri Rural Development Program (SSRDP) in the span of foour months giving light to more than 300 families.

This village is one of the re-

motest village as there are three buses a day and the villagers’ main profession is forestry and agriculture.

The solar lamp is independ-ent, long-lasting and an envi-ronment-friendly solution to overcome the problem of lack

of power in villages. So SSRDP decided to set up a solar system in the village. After a survey, the work was completed in just four months. Before this project was set up around 150 villagers at-tended Art of Living programs here and had seen major changes

in their lives. Participants, with the guidance and motivation given by volunteers, took up the project and implemented it suc-cessfully.

Volunteers trained 10 villagers to handle the solar energy system. Among them three are women.

DTDC, a private company, gave funding for the project. The village has several other prob-lems such sanitation, water, and lack of access to transportation.

In the next phase, toilet con-struction, sanitation and organic farming will be taken up. Darkness fades

Solar lights in Chamrajnagar dt. Third from left is Priya, project coordinator, and Swami Suryapada

Reporters State & Zonal Divisions E mail ID Contact Number Kumlin Engtipi Assam kumlin3144@gmail.com 8761823371Mukesh Chapagain Assam keshmu@gmail.com 8724872045Lokesh Kumar Chhattisgarh lokesh1211.sinha@gmail.com 9303034858, 7415481317Santoshi Nimbadkar Chhattisgarh santosheea@gmail.com 8817630709Meenakshi Chauhan Himachal Pradesh jgd.meenu@gmail.com 9418483822Saroj Kumari Jharkhand komalnl52@gmail.com 9798104255Dilip Kumar Kohli Karnataka dilipkoli1432@gmail.com 9535497006, Malappa D. Belamge Karnataka manu00674@gmail.com 9900941479, 8971547180Unnikrishnan Vijayan Pillai Kerala unnivijayanpillai@gmail.com 9446341232Vishnu Manoharan Kerala vishnumanoharan@gmail.com 7760896609, 9037571579Anil K. Tupe Maharashtra: Aurangabad anil.tupe44@gmail.com 9421965545, 8275278023Gajanan Navatre Maharashtra: Pune & Nashik gajunavatre@gmail.com 9970260145Gauri Shitole Maharashtra: Pune & Konkan gauris347@gmail.com 9970237119Manish Bhaviskar Maharashtra: Nashik manish22kar6@gmail.com 8087922045Rakeshkumar Patil Maharashtra: Nashik 74rakeshpatil@gmail.com 9404056697, 9405793343Sanjiwani Warkade Maharashtra: Nagpur & Amaravathy sanjiwani7@gmail.com 9822184791Shwetha Pokle Maharashtra: Nagpur shwetapokle1210@gmail.com 9970043851Yogesh Pinngale Maharashtra: Nashik yapshri1@gmail.com 8087734766, 9405917099Binay Kumar Sahoo Odissa binayajgd@gmail.com 8457824381Arpit Vyas Rajasthan aol.arpit@gmail.com 9632973883Chandrasekhar G Rajasthan shekhar.chandra991@gmail.com 8107405458, 7726022068Gurucharan Ambreshvar Tamilnadu charan2607@hotmail.com 9566328604, 8123979271Nivetha M.R. Tamilnadu mrnivetha023@gmail.com 9486568493Arun Kumar Uttar Pradesh arunkumarjgd28@gmail.com 8476846197, 9536999960Hanumanth Kumar Singh Uttar Pradesh hksinghraj1@gmail.com 9448191287, 9621896834Ram asheesh Uttar Pradesh ramasheesh8@gmail.com 9044445094Rajesh Kundu West Bengal rajesh.kundu10@gmail.com 7762827109

YLTP Media & Documentation Team

Seva Times

Project DirectorDr. Rajesh Trivedi

(National Director, YLTP)

Editorial teamVishnu Manoharan

Meenakshi ChauhanRam Asheesh

AdvisorsM. Kalyanaraman

Saurabh BawejaKarthik Krishna

Mansi Dharmaraj

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2012 2013 2014

Growth of YLTP Conducted Rural Courses

Courses Rural Art Excel Rural YES! Rural Happiness YLTP

No. of Participants

Gurudev During satsang at Bangalore Ashram on August 28

Total Courses Participants Courses Participants Courses ParticipantsRural Art Excel --- --- 162 7750 1908 57300Rural YES! --- --- 159 8237 143 5940Rural Happiness 1259 22999 2020 43297 1385 38106YLTP 308 10271 489 11777 255 8352YLTP 2 18 687 --- ---

20142012 2013Courses