Inter Faith Charitable Trust (IFC) India.
There are two very closely related sides to IFC:
- IFC Temple of Divine Love trainings center.
- IFC village project.
IFC Temple of Divine Love trainings center.
IFC is a trainings center that supports western students to take a break from
western harsh living, to find their inner peace and love in a pleasant
environment far away from all western thinking and rushing.
It invites the students to interact with local people and kids and experience
Indian rural living. Being exposed on a daily bases with the joy and hardship of
the local people might help the students to put their own lives in perspective.
It invites the students also to share her or his knowledge in the project.
The Center is located 50 kilometers away from Madurai near tiny forgotten Indian
villages. The center is been build up as a farm with a big young garden and a
steadily growing organic gardening project.
Our teacher is Sri Param Eswaran, a well-known tantric master.
He has been traveling around the world for years sharing his knowledge with
people who are open for it. Now he has decided to settle down in India.
Sri Param Eswaran shares with all a unique way of dancing with life in a
continuous space of love, thus finding inner joy, peace and happiness, as what I
the writer is experiencing, being myself from the west.
Sri Param Eswaran travels with you through the heights and depths of your
emotions and uses his skills, wisdom and above all, his love to help you find
your true self.
His teachings are based on traditional Tantra and his deep knowledge of Indian
Vedic past. It is a way of life.
The teachings give you the tools to learn how to dance with life.
If you use the tools well your life will become happier, more joyful and loving.
Because the center is located in a remote area of South India, it gives the
students the chance to grow spiritually very fast. There is no disturbance and
because the mental pollution in this area is very, very low compared to what we
in the west experience. This helps all to be focused on their own spiritual
growth.
IFC village project
Serving is one of the highest spiritual practices in tantric philosophy.
Ramakrishna’s well known disciple Vivekananda puts it as follows:
“I rather do 8 hours of serving then 8 hours of meditation”.
That is why we choose to serve the local communities around our center.
Serving will make us grow spiritually.
If we serve with love, care and devotion the other parts of our lives will
become more loving, caring and devoted. What we give out will come back to us.
When we can bring joy to the lives of children then we bring joy to the Inner
self.
Tapping into the joy and love of children is like tapping into our own inner
child, thus bring joy, and love to our selves. Only when we are joyful and
loving we can experience greatness within ourselves.
Running projects of IFC village project that serve the local community of Killankulam.
We bought the land in October 2003 and a lot has happened since then.
It is an on going process and it will be that for a while.
But so far we have established 5 buildings on the property.
We have a young growing garden, due to heavy clay soil it takes longer for the
plants to grow. In the last few months we have been bringing in soil, this will
help all the new plants to grow faster.
We have chicken running around that provide us with eggs.
We have so far 12 cows of which 5 of them provide us with milk. We need to buy
another three milking cows, that will sustain part of the project, mainly all
the wages and feed for the cows. To do so we need to raise another 39, 000
rupees which is about 750 Euros or US $870
We have 4 dogs eleven ducks and a couple of stray dogs.
We have an ever growing organic garden
What do we do to help the local community?
* We have 7 boys and 3 girls coming here every day.
They eat with us and 3 up to 7 boys sleep here in one of the rooms every day.
We provide the basic needs for them, food, clothing, medicines and a bed to
sleep and school stationary.
Because they are staying here with us we have the chance to teach them about
hygiene and morals.
Because they have to interact with us they learn to speak English in the process
which will be useful for them in later life as well.
• We support the families of Vinoth and Selvi. Because the father of Vinoth died
a copple of years ago and Selvi’s father is not able to work.
• We support Megavarnam and Senthilkumar because we feel those two boys have big
potential but still their families are very poor.
Support means that we pay the school fee for the kids and all the school
utensils.
Further if there is a festival we will provide the kids’ presents so that the
parents do not have to borrow money for that (which they normally do).
The children are already eating here.
If they would need any medical care, we will take care of that as well.
If they have the capability to go to college or university or learn a specific
profession we would like to support them in the future.
* To bring up the potential of the kids we organize singing, dancing and sport
competitions every other month for all the kids in Killankulam. We would
appreciate some help in the form of gift packages, like what was send by my
colleagues from Holland or cash donations.
* IFC provides jobs for several families from Killankulam and another nearby
village.
There are at the moment 7 people continuously working here. Next to that there
are local casual laborers doing a job on a regular bases since
there is still a lot of work going on.
To support the local community we made sure to buy all the cows and chicken from
them.
We have a local shop where we buy all our vegetables from, other than what we
grow.
* We gave an interest free loan to the shopkeeper of Killankulam to build an EP
room on his land that supports the water supply for his land so that he can grow
a crop and support his family.
* We supplied chairs for the community center in Killankulam and we provided
steel bars to build the rest of the community center.
The steel bars are used as reinforcement for the roofing of the building.
* We donated 20 bags of cement to a local temple project.
* We donated our water pump to a local temple project that will provide them
with water.
• We financially help a Para-Olympic medal winner to go to competitions because
they are not sponsored by any commercial or government agencies.
• We provide children with schoolbooks were the family is to poor to pay for
that.
Mostly all the funds come from income derived from workshops offered overseas by
Sri Param Eswaran.
Since we have been busy with the kids and the project, Sri Param Eswaran has not
been able to tour thus making it necessary for us to seek help to maintain the
activities that we are offering at the moment to the forgotten village.