Reimagining Society Project

Last Sunday I spent a wonderful afternoon with my friend Greg Wilpert (head of the Venezuela Analysis web page) and Michael Albert (founder of Znet). They were finishing a frustrating week waiting for an interview with President Chavez that never happened. But during our two-hour conversation in their hotel lobey, Michael invited me to contribute an essay to his REIMAGINING SOCIETY PROJECT. I believe you will recognize some of the names of the other participants at http://www.zcommunications.org/resoc/participants

Actually very few people are discussing positive alternatives to global capitalism. I submitted an essay called "A New Social Paradigm Based On Spiritual Values" which you can see at: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22509

Two other Proutists now have essays up on this project: Michael Towsey's "The Science and Ethics of Cooperation" is at http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/22528 and Sohail Inayatullah's "P.R. Sarkar's Vision Of The Future" at http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/22516

Volunteers at Andanças Festival, Portugal

Andanças 2009 - Restaurante Microvita from Ananda Marga Portugal on Vimeo.

At the beginning of August I spent a week doing volunteer work at the Andanças folk dance festival in Portugal. I believe this slide show of photos demonstrates how professional was the project, how inspired the team was and how happy the customers were with our food and service.

I felt the organization was superb. The design and construction of the kitchen and serving area was very efficient, and the teamwork, led by the leaders, worked very well. They fed tasty nutritious food to about 3,000 people each day -- that's a lot of food! And a sign at the front explained that everyone working there was a volunteer, contributing their time and hard work to benefit social service projects around the world. Of course we can always improve, and the success is in large part due to the contribution of everyone in trying to find better ways to serve.

I had a fairly minor role, teaching yoga and meditation class each afternoon to over 100 participants and helping in the bookstall, where we sold 1000 euros of books,

Finally I would like to express to everyone that it was a privilege and an honor to serve together with the talented and dedicated team of Ananda Marga volunteers at Andanças 2009.