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COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: The Best Basis
ISKCON New Vrajamandala community is a rural project situated about one hour north of Madrid, Spain. The current President, H. H. Yadunanadana Swami, and community are focusing on education as the basis of their community development. Maharaja was initiated in 1978 by H. H. Satsvarupa Das Goswami and took Sannyasa in 2009. He was Principal of the Bhaktivedanta College in Radhadesa and Member of the Executive Committee of the Ministry of Education.
One history explains that the NVM complex was constructed by the Minister of Health to the Spanish Dictator, Francisco Franco (1892-1975) and used as a summer retreat. I had three swimming pools and hundreds of acres of land for horse-back riding. Weekend educational retreats in Sastric studies and specific occupational skills, Puja etc are now organized there. Children from Spanish schools come for a program called, “A Day in India”, and get to milk a cow and offer incense to Their Lordship’s Govinda Chandra. Breakfast and lunch are a rural feast and the peacock is waiting to take your remnants.
In 2017 Maharaja and the devotees chased the spiders out of three of the lower patio rooms, and cleaned, painted and outfitted three sunny rooms as class rooms for a pre-school program. The progressive model is that they will add one level of education each year. This worked in Manipur for H. H. B. S. Damodar Swami and after 12-years his students were winning State competitions.
The core teacher is a devotional jewel, Mani-manjari Devi Dasi, who joined as soon as she finished a teaching commitment with the Avanti School in Vraja. She has been teaching professionally in the secular world for ten-years and is certified by, and well associated with, the professional educational system in Spain known as NABSS. NABSS is a British system fully authorized and appreciated by the government of Spain. She is continuing to enhance her accreditation to primary school level by taking distance education courses from the NABSS facility in Valencia.
NVM and Maharaja are also integrating with the Avanti School Trust, headed by Navin-krsna Das in England, through their pre-school system, Little Avanti Nursery School.
Several very qualified families have already moved to the community to enroll their toddlers and engage their skills in other community services. NVM is minutes away from the picturesque small town of Brihuega where one ISKCON favorable gentleman runs an excellent health spa. He sends clients to NVM as a weekend retreat and some community devotees are taking work with him. Carpooling to Guadalajara (pop. 84, 803) is less than an hour and quite practical for devotees living at NVM for developing their own businesses, or working for municipal or business entities.
Let us finishing by contrasting Maharaja’s and the NVM communities strategy with that of Aghasura.
“Aghāsura was instigated by Kaṁsa, so he had come with determination. Aghāsura also thought that when he would offer grains and water in memory of his brother and sister and kill Kṛṣṇa and all the cowherd boys, then automatically all the inhabitants of Vṛndāvana would die. Generally, for the householders, the children are the life and breath force. When all the children die, then naturally the parents also die on account of strong affection for them.”, https://www.vedabase.com/en/kb/12 [italics ours]
So let us suggest that when the children live and thrive the householders also live, prosper and preach with great success and introspection.
