Stichting de Zaaier

Dear Auroville Today, This is regarding the issue of the articles in Auroville Today # 364, focusing on the employees of Auroville. While I am grateful for the issue dedicated to our employees, in this article, however, no mention is made of SEWA, who did an employee survey in 2000, along with Auroville’s Social Research Centre and Pondicherry University, and most importantly, the funding agency, the Dutch Stichting de Zaaier.

Many years ago, in issue # 188 of September 2004, Auroville Today reported about the work of Hufreesh Dumasia Chopra, a young Auroville artist.

Thamarai, which means 'lotus' in Tamil, is an Auroville educational and health project in the bioregion. There were challenges in 2016 when the Thamarai centre had to shut down in Edayanchavady.

Nammal mudiyam - the “we can” project - is a project of the youth of Edayanchavady. As a step in transforming their village, they organized an alcohol-awareness programme on 28th February in the temple square.

The Joy of Learning is an experiment in collective learning which addresses a wide range of themes associated with life in Auroville. It tries to (re)familiarise the residents with important issues in a stimulating and respectful learning environment, and is supported with funding from Stichting de Zaaier.

The Bioregion Action Group and YouthLink are both outcomes of the Auroville Retreat. Together with Auroville Village Action they are in the process of implementing a project called ‘Paalam’, meaning ‘Bridge’ in Tamil.

Sopanam Auroville has released its second DVD in the series Evolution Fast-forward. This 50-minutes DVD directed and scripted by Manoj Pavitran gives a brief introduction to Sri Aurobindo and The Mother and their ashram, and then deals with Sri Aurobindo’s concepts of evolution, cosmology, yoga-psychology, parts of the being and principles of transformational practice.

As part of its efforts to highlight alternative and sustainable solutions for an urban future, Auroville Green Practices has launched the colourful publication My Pumpkin Roof.

We move through the buzzing mass of people at the Visitors’ Centre toward the quieter corners. We have heard that the Art Cart emerges every Tuesday and Friday afternoon, and have seen pictures of it in The Hindu.

On August 15th, the new Auroville website was launched. It was the result of almost two and a half years of work. Manoj, who leads the technical team, first became involved with the Auroville website in 1998.

The Unity Pavilion recently hosted a new photographic exhibition by Ireno entitled ‘Water Being’. The exhibition, which was partly funded by Stichting de Zaaier, displayed work from an ongoing project to document aquatic-bodywork at Quiet Healing Centre.