Issue Nº326 – News in brief

The Auroville Institute of Applied Technology (AIAT) is now taking admissions for one and two year vocational training courses affiliated to the Central Government National Council of Vocational Training (NCVT). AIAT is well-known for project-oriented learning through doing and for its holistic approach in education, which includes personality building, interview techniques and other extra-curricular activities. To take up a course, a 10th standard qualification is mandatory. After the course completion, all candidates are eligible for a 1-year apprenticeship training in any subject-related company in Pondi-cherry or Tamil Nadu. Students who have completed a 2 years NCVT course are eligible to join an undergraduate course at a college.

The Working Committee has warned of a growing culture of people from outside abandoning their pets at the doorstep of Integrated Animal Care Centre (IACC) and also within other Auroville premises, such as the Town Hall. The IACC ends up taking these pets in, some of which are sick and/or wounded, and providing them with shelter, food, cure and care. But it is becoming exceedingly difficult to care for such animals without available funds and infrastructure. The IACC is already handling more than 70 dogs and does not have the ability to shelter animals for long-term.

The Funds and Assets Management Committee (FAMC) has decided that the word “Auroville” should not be used at the beginning of the name of a unit, activity, project, or course unless it is a unique activity supposed to represent Auroville officially. A guideline has been published.

The Auroville Triathlon 2016 is open for registration for Newcomers and Aurovilians. The Olympic style event includes 1,500 meter swim, 40 kilometres bicycle and 10 kilometres run, the Sprint event 750 meter swim, 20 kilometres bicycle, and 5 kilometres run. The events will take place on November 20, 2016, starting and ending at La Piscine in New Creation.

Building Bridges is a project that aims at building cross-cultural friendships. In September, 19 children from four Auroville schools accompanied by 6 adults will travel to Dharamsala to meet with children of the Tibetan Children’s Village school. They will be hosted by a Tibetan community for 3 weeks. Building Bridges intends to do this every year.

The Working Committee has successfully initiated the circulation of its monthly report by email, in addition to publishing it in the News&Notes and on Auronet. This gives everyone an opportunity to respond, ask questions, and receive feedback without necessarily needing to attend a General Meeting. The response to the experiment has been overwhelmingly positive and a request has been made to translate the report into more languages, such as Tamil, French and Hindi. Regular General Meetings will continue to be held to interact with community members and provide information on topics that cannot be published in a public forum.

Though most Aurovilians have an internet connection at home, the News&Notes are still being printed and brought to the doorsteps of all those who require hard copies. To ensure that paper copies reach all communities by Saturday lunchtime, the deadline for the submissions has been preponed to Tuesday 5 pm, so that printing can start at 2pm on Wednesdays. The process requires two full days for the long chain of events. It includes printing of a master copy on special paper that needs 15 minutes ‘cooking’ on each side of each page; offset printing in English; translation; offset printing in French; in Tamil; stacking by hand all pages of each copy; stapling of all pages in order; hand-writing of each of your names on the cover and then delivery to each community by bike. Switching to a soft copy is still an option.

The Auroville Council and Working Committee, concerned that feedback on those who wish to join the community cannot be based on personal feelings of likes and dislikes, and only on truth and accuracy of experience, have decided to henceforth use a “feedback form”. The option to ask for confidentiality will only be considered for good reasons. If the Entry Service and/or the Auroville Council find the reasons valid, then confidentiality will be assured. If not, the person giving the feedback will be informed that the feedback cannot be considered confidential, and that s/he can choose to either withdraw the feedback or agree to non-confidentiality. All non-confidential feedback will be shared with the Newcomer and an opportunity will be given for clarification before a decision is taken.

The FAMC and the community of Samasti have agreed that the house and garden of a recently deceased community member is transformed into a house for Aurovilians who require assisted living. Also, on Sri Aurobindo’s birthday, August 15th, the Auroville Health Services have started building the Mahalakshmi Home, a home for senior Aurovilians who are “mostly fit enough to organize their daily lives and need only special help for things such as dressing, laundry, and for seniors who wish to live together with other seniors in order to be in an environment of peers and mutual understanding and support.” The Foundation Stone for this building was laid on 3rd October 2015 in the presence of Dr. Karan Singh (Chairman of the Governing Board) and Sir Mark Tully (International Advisory Council).

The Budget Coordination Committee has informed that it no longer has enough resources to cover the present level of expenses and still maintain a buffer in case of emergencies. A shortfall of Rs.1.2 crores of income for the current 2016-17 budget is faced, as a result of which the City Services will be in deficit from October 2016 to March 2017. The reason for the shortfall is the unpaid contribution from a number of commercial units who have not fulfilled in the period 2010 to 2015 their commitment to contribute at least 33% of their profits to the community. Emails sent to and personal communication with the executives of the defaulting units have given little or no results. The BCC considers this as a misuse of Auroville’s fiscal governmental support and has asked the major working groups to take appropriate action. In view of the present financial situation, the BCC has frozen the allocation of community maintenances. This means that no new maintenances will be allocated for the time being and that Auroville services which have unused maintenances in their approved budget will not be allowed to start using them.

The process of finding replacements for some outgoing members of the Working Committee and the Auroville Council, and for finding new members of the Funds and Assets Management Committee, has started with community members nominating 680 candidates. The profiles of those who have accepted their nomination and of the community members who want to participate in the 3-day selection process will be published for community feedback. All feedback will be evaluated by a Temporary Feedback Review Committee whose members have been nominated by the Auroville Council from the list of nominees received from the community at large. The 3-day selection process will happen from October 21st – 23rd.