Founding a charitable Trust in Germany to extend support for Children

Founding a charitable Trust in Germany to extend support for Children – 9 Dec 12

Post author:Balendu
Post published:09/12/2012
Post category:My Life
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As I was doing every year, I also spent the Holi festival of the year 2005 in Vrindavan with my family. That was a tradition that I never broke with and a time which I valued for all the joy and happiness that was around. After Holi, when it was slowly beginning to get hot in India, I took off to Europe to work there – of course in more pleasant weather.

This trip started like all previous ones, with programs in different cities. Now however, after more than four years of travelling in the west, and big parts of it in Germany, it seemed as though things were evolving to something bigger and better and I loved it. Of course, after several visits to the same cities, there were many people who knew me and who came each time to visit me. Many of them became friends and we talked about the future and what we could do. I already told you about the plans for a yoga teacher training together with the Cologne University and of course once I came to Cologne, the plans proceeded. It was not only the teacher training, though, there were ideas to do even more.

I had told people before already about our support for boys who wanted to learn Sanskrit in Vrindavan and who could come to our Ashram, go to Sanskrit school, take lessons and thus get the knowledge to later teach or preach for example. Now I told people about the school children whom we had started supporting and many of them were very happy and wanted to support this project. They told me that they had for a long time had the wish to do something, to help in some way but were never sure to which organization they should give. One could hear a lot about corruption in organizations and people also preferred smaller organizations. We were really not big but we had our trust in India through which we could support children – but in which way could people from Germany now give their support?

The answer that we found when talking about it was that we could found a similar charitable trust in Germany! It would be the best way for friends in Germany to donate! If we would get enough participants for the yoga teacher training – and we were confident that we would – we would also donate whatever income was there after our expenses to the charity. Yes, that sounded like a plan!

I had met a lot of young and enthusiastic, spiritual people in Germany and when we talked about a charitable trust, I actually went one step further and wanted to include the help for young people in Germany, too. I had heard about problems that especially young people had and for which I knew that yoga and meditation could be a solution – stress, pressure, anxiety and more! So why not combine these causes and help young people in Germany and children in India at the same time?

The ideas grew in this way and I was happy when the plans took shape and we went to a lawyer to get the paperwork ready for starting a charitable trust in Germany which would support the education of children in India and spread the knowledge of the yogic science in Germany which could help youth and people in general to stay healthy, physically and mentally. It was a plan, we had started its execution and I was happy that this was going on.