Issue Nº383-384 – News in brief

The Entry Service reported that during the entire lockdown period it was fully engaged in discharging its duties. Since June 2020, 111 Newcomers have been confirmed as Aurovilians and 49 new applicants were processed to start their Newcomer process. Altogether there are presently 116 Newcomers in the process. Since February 2021, the Entry Service has been reviewing the situation of about 150 people who approached the Entry Service after June 2020. Meanwhile, the Entry Service is facing issues of Newcomers not being able to find a place of work, or who are not able to sustain themselves financially, or who can’t find an adequate long-term housing solution. The Entry Service is meeting with other working groups to see how to move forward to resolve these roadblocks.

In February this year, the Residents’ Assembly Service (RAS) announced its wish to pause all Residents’ Assembly Decision-making (RAD) processes until a review is made of the existing decision-making policy and the RAS mandate. A sub-group composed of members of the Auroville Council and Working Committee have started to review the present RAD process in order to restart all pending RAD processes soon, while also initiating an overall study of how to find better ways of arriving at community decisions. To harvest feedback and ideas on an entirely new RAD process and on the reformulation of the RAS mandate, an open invitation to bring ideas and feedback was issued, and about 20 emails with varying and diverse inputs have so far been received

The Working Committee has appointed a core team of five Aurovilians to prepare the celebrations of Sri Aurobindo’s 150th birth anniversary 15-08-2022.

Work on the Garden of the Unexpected, on the western edge of the Matrimandir gardens oval, has picked up speed again with a tree platform having been built. The intention of this garden, as expressed by Roger Anger, the architect of Matrimandir, is to offer a space where children can wander, marvel, explore the unexpected and begin to enter into the deeper atmosphere of the Matrimandir.

The Garden of Existence, the first of the 12 main Matrimandir gardens which was built 11 years ago, is receiving a major upgrade. The large granite stone that was the central focus of the garden has been removed. It will be replaced by 50 natural quartz crystals of different sizes: the largest is over one meter tall and weighs more than one ton. The work is still underway.

More than 100 design teams responded to the open international design call for the next four main gardens: Light, Life, Power and Wealth. In March 2021, the two leading teams of designers were invited to Auroville to go through a two week integration process, attempting to synthesize a final design from the best elements of their respective concepts. By June they will share their fully integrated designs.

Though Auroville has done a lot of welfare work for the villages, more attention is needed in building healthy and collaborative relationships with the village leaders and elders. This is in order to reduce the instances of misunderstandings that can flare into conflict and to create an atmosphere where Auroville and the villages work together harmoniously. The Working Committee has called on Aurovilians who are in a position to contribute to this endeavour to collaborate.

In the last three years, the Auroville Council has had to deal with many situations where a unit, a service, an Auroville activity or a school had to ask an Aurovilian to discontinue his or her work. This prompted the Auroville Council to formulate a set of guidelines to be followed by workplaces before the final dismissal of an Aurovilian. The document has been sent to a few groups for feedback.

A year ago, in May 2020, the Budget Coordination Committee (BCC) and the Funds and Assets Management Committee (FAMC) jointly created “Temporary Emergency Maintenances” for those Aurovilians working in activities, units or services who were no longer able to receive a maintenance from their unit or service due to the Covid-19 emergency, and were in need. The BCC and FAMC have now agreed to increase the availability of this temporary support. As of June 2021, Temporary Emergency Maintenances will now also be available to any Aurovilian who chooses to volunteer at an existing activity, unit or service that has insufficient funds to support them with a maintenance, and who is in financial difficulty.