News of the Prout Research Institute of Venezuela

The effort to buy the perfect house for the PRI-V continues. In the meantime, we have rented temporary office space in the upstairs of the Ananda Marga Kindergarten. Last year a new roof was put on, and this week the bathroom is being repaired, the interior is being painted, two new doors are being hung, and office furniture is being purchased. The school telephone will be transferred to the PRI-V: 00-58-212-633-0131.

We have applied for broadband Internet connection, and the company has promised to install it within 10 days. (Of course things don’t move as quickly in Venezuela as in other countries!) For those who have visited Venezuela, you will realize how happy we are to have employed Diipanii to cook a delicious breakfast and lunch for the staff five days a week!

The first meeting of the Venezuelan Board of Directors has taken place. We are confirming the proposed legal constitution and bylaws of the Institute Foundation. Eight Venezuelan Proutists (Sarvajiit, Satyam, Manujesh, Mrtyunjaya, Tapas, Sulocana, Laksman, Krsna Priya) plus Didi Ananda Sadhana and myself will be members. We will also collectively decide on inviting some other professionals who are sympathizers to sit on the Board.

Eleven senior Proutists in other countries have so far agreed to be on the International Advisory Board of the PRI-V: Hiranmaya (US), Karma Rasa (US), Dharmadeva (Brazilian economist moving to NYC), Dhruva (US), Suprabhata (US), Nirainjana (Palestine/US), Dayabatii (US), Mayajiit (US), Citsvarupa (US), Aradhana (US), Shiva (PhDc Philippines), Jayanta Kumar (Australia). We are still waiting for confirmation from the others we have invited.

Our multi-lingual web site is under construction by professional web-designer Dada Unmantranandajii. We are finishing the various menu texts in English and Spanish, and we hope to have it ready in the first week of October.

Despite his university diploma, his former job as an architect and despite the apartment in Budapest that he owns, the US government refused to give a visa to our LFT Dharmapal so that he could transit in Miami Airport for 150 minutes. Now he is struggling to re-route his air ticket to avoid touching that country that is forbidden to him. Atideva, another excellent brother from Hungary will arrive here this week.

Fabio, in consultation with half a dozen IT experts in other countries, continues to develop the detailed plans for our computer system. The hardware infrastructure will be desktop computers and one (file) server. We will buy the expensive components in Miami and assemble them here. The system will run on Linux (Ubuntu) with Open Office which we are confident will fulfill our needs and be consistent with our ideological direction. The network will be secured via a firewall, and will operate on a RAID system, with two hard disks continually mirroring the stored information, so in case of a disk crash, the other disk can carry on operations seamlessly. Weekly backups on rewritable DVDs stored in different locations will prevent electronic knowledge loss even in catastrophe scenarios.

Asiima is researching about Venezuelan inflation, devaluation and other economic indicators. Other researchers in other countries have started looking into cooperatives as well.

Please send your suggestions and best wishes.