Tag: service
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Himalayan Roots & Global Fruits: The Humble Birth of Earthville
This story was written in response to a request from my friend Rodger Kamenetz to post to his popular Jew in the Lotus page. An unlikely path How did an artist and activist fresh out of college wind up opening a vegetarian restaurant and community center just up the street from H.H. the Dalai Lama,…
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Ground Game: Purple People Power
I just came home from a fascinating, exhilarating, and exhausting election day volunteering for the Obama campaign in Colorado. And before I get on with the the story, in the current climate I guess I’d better say why. First, full disclosure: I’m not registered with any political party. I do believe it’s my responsibility as…
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Help Dharmalaya Open Its Doors
The first building on the new eco-campus of the Dharmalaya Institute is just two steps away from being ready to welcome the public, and Dharmalaya needs your help to reach the finish line. The neo-traditional adobe-and-bamboo building survived its second heavy monsoon season in perfect shape, thanks to the dedicated team of Himachali craftsmen, local labourers, and…
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Zen and the Jazz of Green Building in India
From the Earthville Blog: The biggest news on the construction of the Dharmalaya Institute is in regard to our race against time to get the roof on our baby building before the onslaught of the monsoon rains this month… and the update is that, well, we couldn’t win, so we’ve done our best to change the…
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Planting a Vertical Orchard
From the Earthville Blog: For our first service retreat program at the Dharmalaya Institute in Bir, our friends at SanghaSeva brought sixteen wonderful, hard-working volunteers from all over the globe to work with us, so we took on a major project that could only be done with that kind of person power: landscaping a landslide to…
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A Picture of Progress
From the Earthville Blog: We’ll be posting a detailed update on the construction of the Dharmalaya Institute soon. For now, here’s a little picture of progress… 🙂
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Our First Service Retreat in Bir
From the Earthville news page: This month, the Dharmalaya Institute (a project of the Earthville Network) hosted its first service retreat program for international volunteers on its new eco-campus near the remote village of Bir in the Indian Himalayas. Organized in collaboration with SanghaSeva, the retreat welcomed sixteen participants from eight countries for ten days of volunteer work, group…
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The Earthville Orchards
From the Earthville News page: The Earthville Network is pleased to announce the launch of the Earthville Orchards, a win-win-win-win opportunity for conscientious global citizens and responsible businesses to sponsor tree plantings in order to offset their carbon footprints while creating green jobs for Indian villagers and more… Read the whole story here.
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A Groundbreaking Event!
It’s on… 🙂 From the Earthville news page: After a year of preparation, today the Dharmalaya team in India broke ground for the construction of a new, eco-friendly service-learning campus in the foothills of the Himalayas. The Dharmalaya Institute will serve as the base for our sustainable village development projects in the Himalayas and will also…
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The Road to Mudville
Merhaba from Konya! Arriving in this ancient Anatolian city, once a fertile garden of cross-pollination among the great mystics and scholars, philosophers and poets from all over Eurasia, my warm-hearted tram driver, Mehmet, asked my views about Islam and Linux… I grinned. I had spent the whole night on a bus to reach this place…
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Can’t Go hOMe Again…?
We plant trees. We come back later. Some have died, some are still standing… and some have spawned magical forests! After five years away from my old hOMe of Dharamshala (a small but densely bustling town in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, which serves as the exile home for H.H. the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan…