D. E. V. A. Ashram |
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Currently the ashram (school) is just our immediate 3 children and immediate donations are being sought to assist in their education. However, please read the colomn to the right that first describes our educational curiculum model and foundation, and then describes our more broad D.E.V.A. school plans for which we are seeking much larger funding and support for. The two are both separate ideas, but the DEVA project is really a growth and extention of our home school effort. For an immediate need we are seeking any donation you can give toward our homeschool efforts as my children's education expenses are more than we have been able to meet. Public schools often ask for donations to cover costs the government funding does not meet. Sometimes they ask donations to help with theatrical costume costs, band instruments, band member travel expenses, or football uniform costs. Private schools have donation drives. One local private school has radio ads asking people to donate vehicles of all types running or not. (We can accept XP capable computers - working or not). At the time I do not have a non-profit tax exempt status set up for D. E. V. A. (that takes money to do so). What ever you can give, $1 - $10 + will really help. We are brahmanical (priestly) devotees. As such, brahmans are actually supposed to live by charity, by asking for donations and charity. A guru's (teacher's) ashram (school) is maintained by the students and the teacher going out and asking for chaitable donations. If you can spare a few $, it will be used in the service of Lord Krsna via the education of these aspiring devotees. We accept donations by Visa, MasterCard, Discover & Am Express. We use PayPal for processing. You do not need to have a PayPal account to send the donation. We all thank you in advance. (The donation link will take you to PayPal. You do not need to have or open a PayPal account, we use PayPal as a donation's payment processor only. With this service you can make your donations via most major credit cards. If you do not have an account, then look for the link for making 'other payment' on the following page that just below the PayPal login) Thank You Very Much. (NOTE: To learn more about the larger D. E. V. A. project that we to develop, read the full colomn to the right) |
Our educational foundation is
The most important knowledge in life is knowing who we are, who God is and our eternal relationship with Him. That comes first and foremost. And to learn the path to reach Him and serve Him in this life, and how to teach others this path That is our first priority of knowledge. The second most important thing is to learn good, respectable character. To be honest and truthful, to learn to respect all others,, to be humble and to be responsible for one's actions. To take up and discharge one's duties as the external manifestation of serving Krsna (God). Character is the second priority in education. Srila Prabhupad's books and teachings are the sole source for these aspects of their education. When the above 2 are firmly established then the varna or occupational dutes will automatically follow. Public schools do not teach the first two, and only focus on teaching skills to be used in entering the 'job-market'. Regarding our children's future occupational or income work, rather then focus on teachng them skills to enter the work force (job-market for the working class), our educational emphasis for income is focused on how they can start set up their own business, preferably homebased businesses of a cottage industry, and earn their incomes from home. We are not training sudras, how to get the skills to work for others, but how to earn income independently, and lead and manage others. DEVA - EXPANDING OUR SCHOOL Some years ago I started to set up a school I called D.E.V.A (Devotional Education and Vedic Academics), but never had the funding to get it established. The idea was to first set up an online based school founded on the above platform. If there is interest and sufficient donations toward expanding our school, then I would welcome the opportunity to broaden the school. First we would set up an online based home-school system that other children could take advantage of world-wide. I would want this school to be made available as low cost as possible so many members could take advantage of it. I once wanted to set this up for the benefit of my own 3 children, however, they are now coming to the age where they could help in setting this up for others. It would take a good 6 months to a year to set up the online materials, and would require involving many others. We would set up 2 venues. The devotional and character venue should be offered free of charge. Home based varna training would be availabe at affordable fees, which would include business training, accounting, managerial academics. Another venue would be availabe which would contain educational topics and standards that would meet accredation standards for which our school would seek proper accredation for so that those who complete the online courses would obtain accredited diplomas. For this venue a higher fee would need to be charged, but we still want to set up trust funds that would keep the cost of these services to a minimum. A preliminary rough estimate is that we would need at least $80,000 to get the basic foundation set up so we could open a fairly comprehensive online course from K-12. We may only focus on 6-12 to begin with. The first venue would be our first priority, then the addredation venue, then add K-6. Over time we could work into an online college as well. Additional features would be to include a boarding school - ashram where horticulture, agriculture, animal husbandry, arts, crafts and homebased cottage industry trades could be taught. Organic farming (with aim toward homebased family businesses), and community self-sustenance. We also would like to set up a lab for alternaitve and free-energy production aimed toward cottage-industry based community development. Martial arts, community guards and administrative (governmental) training can also be added. If you have an interest in helping to fund such educational based services on a much broader venue, then please contact me. |
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