"Because we all share this small planet earth, we have to learn to live in harmony and peace with each other and with nature.
That is not just a dream, but a necessity." -His holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
If we want to evolve as one human family it is crucial to reeducate our children, our families and our countries. As we consider a competitive educational method, separating one from the other, as destructive for our societies we feel an urgent need to revise our current education models and to change destructive parts for creative ones and to complement disregarded fields.
SEMBRANDO SEMILLAS con YOGA (SSCY) offers a creative education model and has the vision of a sustainable living community. We are located in Cruz Verde, about 30 minutes from Cusco. The projects workforce is based on voluntary help.
The original idea was to share the principle teachings of YOGA in order to maintain a balanced and harmonious life. Implementing YOGA into an education model is to our minds a complementary part of primary education. The way of YOGA gives the opportunity to all people to realize themes of great importance in these days. In Peru there is very little known about what YOGA means and what YOGA offers in terms of well-being, wisdom and knowledge.
The intention of our project SEMBRANDO SEMILLAS con YOGA is to focus on these issues
Unemployment and lack of employment
Our students and their parents find themselves in difficult economic situations, not having steady work placements or not having work at all.
Insufficient Education
Public education in Peru is very basic, not offering the students a sufficient development of their intellectual and emotional capacities.
Malnutrition & Alcoholism
Several parents in the respective communities are alcohol addicts and unable to meet their children's needs, both emotionally and physically.
Lack of Hygiene
This is the root of many diseases in the region, like parasites and other infectious diseases.
Environmental Contamination
People in the communities seem to have lost connection and respect of the environment, polluting fields, forests and waters.
These are the fields SSCY is addressing and where we with social concern create solutions by offering our school program and balanced, adequate and natural nutrition transported by our sustainable living community program.
Sembrando Semillas con Yoga is funded by good hearts and good will of our donators, people around the world who feel that we contribute one part to a peaceful life in harmony.
Please consider supporting us either financially or with your workforce! This is very important! We need you and we need everybody's help!
SSCY has following OBJECTIVES:
Creating a solution to the destructive and competitive, educational system through a creative and cooperative education model.
Reaching a global consciousness change of social and environmental sustainability.
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THE VISION OF SEMBRANDO SEMILLAS con YOGA
The entire vision consists of 2 important areas:
Creative Education
Self-Sustainability
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CURRENT ACTIONS
FUND RAISING CAMPAIGN
Sembrando Semillas con Yoga needs to collect the funds for the purchase of the Center, meaning the land and the building. In case that we do not make it, the center must be closed by beginning of July, after 2 YEARS!!! of Service for in total close to a 100 children. Please do not hesitate and help SSCY to become a Permanent Center of Yoga and Social Service now. Please Participate and Donate!
Start: 15.03.2012
Goal: To raise $ 70.000
Deadline: 30.06.2012
Collected until now:$ 2.850
Still missing:$ 67.150
Creative Education
We currently offer daily classes for about 20-40 kids in Yoga, Meditation, Ecologic Consciousness, Art, Nutrition, Recycling, Quechua, English, Education 3000 and Tutoring.
All the classes at SSCY are free of charge and the doors are open to everybody, so the number of course participants varies greatly. We intend to help people develop their skills through various creative activities so they can live a fuller life and share this knowledge and ideas with the people around them. Ultimately we hope that they will be able to sustain themselves.
Our aim is to sow a seed in the heart of every child, youth and adult that we work with. It is a seed of truth, consciousness and self-knowledge, of living a positive, sustainable and ecological life in harmony with mother earth and everything that surrounds us.
Through the use of the wonderful practice of YOGA, we aim to help children and youth to realize their potential, and thus discover the way to a wise, balanced and healthy life. Our school can help them to create the solid base they need.
Very important in our education model are basic values and principles that reflect union, equality, sharing, respecting, understanding, cooperating, forgiving and loving, for yourself and for others.
The creative school addresses the following areas:
- Yoga
- Meditation & Respiration
- Ecological Consciousness
- Health & Nutrition
- Quechua & English
- Art, Creation & Recycling
- Education 3000
- Tutoring
YOGA
Yoga means union of body, mind and spirit. We consider Yoga as a way of living, as a balance of the physical and the mental. Yoga helps to prevent diseases, raise self esteem, confront depression, raise energy levels, enhance discipline and concentration, improve the blood stream and digestive and nervous systems, balance the endocrine glands and helps improving memory and attention.
Children who practise the techniques of Yoga will become more conscious of their breathing and thus more sensitive to their own bodies.
There are many factors, like stress, that lead people into depression. With YOGA and meditation we can observe the emotions that arise in our body and mind. We can understand and direct ourselves to a way of tranquility and peace, knowing how to guide and control these emotions.
The Temple
As one important part of the Yoga Education we constructed a temple (Ashram) for our Yoga practice and meditations. This is a place where we welcome every person to join us in doing Yoga, meditating and creating a sacred space of tranquility, evolution and prayer. We hope that Yogis, teachers, pilgrims and wise people from different parts of the world will make it a place of spiritual discourse and yogic teachings.
We are giving Yoga lessons in the ashram to the local children from the surrounding communities, teaching them to meditate, to breathe and thus find inner tranquility and direction.
MEDITATION AND BREATHING
Peace, Calmness of Mind, Concentration, Reunion with the Internal Being, Harmony.
The person who is disciplined in meditation achieves a state of mental and emotional connection. Rhythmic breathing and attention, especially in the first stages, are indispensable, decreasing the frequency of thought. Meditation allows us to experience a high level of clarity, peace and harmony, bringing many physical and emotional results.
ECOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS
With courses in ecological consciousness and gardening we are preparing the children & youth to take their responsibility to protect the planet, the environment and themselves, to better understand our connection to nature, to others, and the importance of the health of all for the health of ourselves.
Learning how to avoid waste and garbage or reuse it they can contribute to the wellbeing of the community and the society. We transmit the necessity of organic cultivation and sustainable economic and social systems and concepts.
HEALTH & NUTRITION
A suitable and balanced diet is very important. Many people who live in the mountains have unbalanced nutrition, creating a deficiency in the body. The consequences of this incomplete diet affect abilities and skills in all aspects of life.
For these reasons we are giving children a daily balanced and vegetarian meal after classes and activities. We teach how to cook organic, vegetarian food. It is important to know the value of nutrients, vitamins and essential proteins.
Balanced nutrition leads to a balanced life.
Dining Hall
Therefore we built a dining hall where we are having sacred food circles every day in the evening after the classes. Before eating we all together bless the food with a sacred Mantra.
This place is also be used as place of recreation, art and expression, running workshops and teaching courses and making theatrical shows for children of the community.
QUECHUA & ENGLISH
We want to conserve the local culture by teaching Quechua, because we feel that the loss of this beautiful and antique language of our Incan ancestors is inacceptable. Since Cusco thrives on tourism, many people need to speak an extra language to have the possibility to work in hotels and restaurants or tourist agencies. With volunteer teachers coming from abroad, mostly English-speaking, we provide beginner courses in English to introduce the children to the basics of the language. This provides them a wider range of social contact and working possibilities.
ART, CREATION & RECYCLING
Giving students the opportunity to create with their own hands allows them to develop not only their intellectual capacities but to learn to sustain themselves and see that they have power and possibilities to express themselves.
The children mostly create by reusing and recycling papers, plastic, bottles, milk cartons and so on, things that they don't use anymore in their homes. Based on these we create pen holders, wallets, books, lamps etc. Beside that we run courses in Handicraft and in making natural soaps, bread etc. as well as workshops in painting and drawing.
All this as well serves them to improve and develop their imagination and gives them the opportunity to express themselves and can also help them economically.
Art serves as a form of expression and therapy
EDUCATION 3000
It is an educational tool that permits the integration of our Being from a practical point of view, generating a new pedagogic consciousness. Its fundament are integral, educative programs adapted to this new reality in which we are living and it strives for a new global integral education, which is active and conscious.
It aims the integral development of the human being, considering among others, the physical, emotional, cognitive, spiritual, intuitive, social, multicultural and ecological levels.
TUTORING
Through one-on-one tutoring we help provide the kids with the help they need to complete their daily homework, to prepare for their exams and to help improve their reading, writing, speech and mathematic skills.
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Self-Sustainability
We see Food, Energy, Education and Clothing as basic needs that should be freely available and have a vision to deliver these to the kids.
We feel that it is of crucial importance for our society to implement organic and sustainable agricultural concepts on a large scale, to use clean and sustainable energy sources and to rethink our ways of using and wearing artificial textile, for our health and the health of the planet.
FOOD & ORGANIC LAND CULTIVATION
Currently we have approx. 1.500m2 of farmland available, of which 1000m2 are located in the Sacred Valley. We have been cultivating potatoes, ocas, and different grains such as wheat, quinua and corn as well as different legumes like habas, peas and tarwi. By this cultivation we not only want to provide the necessary food for the project but as well we intend to conserve the local plants and herbs. Besides that we grow different types of salads and vegetables, like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, chard, spinach, carrot, garlic, onions, beetroots etc.
Our herb garden offers parsley, thyme, rosemary, different types of mint, oregano, coriander and some medicinal plants. These are not just used in the kitchen, but as well provide a natural way of healing and treatment.
We are cultivating different types of fruits like apple, pear, strawberry, plum, peach, elder, cactus pear, curuba etc.
With a balance of grains, tuber crops, legumes, vegetables and fruits we offer complete and nutritive meals considering all physical needs to the students and to the community.
All cultivation is 100 % natural and free of all chemical substances, using compost, animal dung and guano. We seek to promote a healthy and conscious life to children and adults, like a life of respect and value for the planet, our mother, our source of life.
However with the current amount of land we are unable to fully provide food for the project participants and students.
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FUTURE ACTIONS
Creative Education
The scholar vision of Sembrando Semillas con Yoga
At the moment we basicly have only one real classroom available, so when there are many children we often have a lack of space, especially during the rain season, which does not permit to teach outside.
To teach in a proper way we would need additional land and financial support to build at least 3 classrooms and a library for the children's academic needs and complementary infrastructure like washrooms and bathrooms.
Self-Sustainability
FOOD &s ORGANIC LAND CULTIVATION
We would like to acquire additional farmland for the next farming season starting in October 2012, to provide more local food.
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In addition we would like to construct greenhouses to cultivate vegetables and herbs that the rough mountain climate does not permit us to grow, such as basil, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchinis and more.
We just started to keep animals, at the moment chickens and goats for milk and cheese production, as well as egg supply. Soon we would like to welcome the first cow to our family also.
We want to plant a food forest, cultivating different fruit plants to create a stabil eco-system and to demonstrate sustainability and abundance from a completely natural point of view.
To reach full self-sufficience in our community we want to work with the concept of bartering, which is to say an exchange of natural products with local people that share similar values.
SUSTAINABLE ENERGY SOURCES
To further reach self-sustainability and teach the children about alternative energy sources, we want to use photovoltaic technologies or other clean and sustainable sources, to live in harmony with nature and to be independent and clean.
CLOTHING
To engage and help the community, we want to produce and trade natural textiles to produce clothing. This would include classes from local artisans to create a healthy relationship with our land and community. The objective here is to show a healthy way of living and an independent way of dressing.
Direction:Cruz Verde Quehuapay, Cusco- PERU
e-mail: info@sembrandosemillasconyoga.org
web: www.sembrandosemillasconyoga.org
Phone: +51 984 018474