About this project

Thank you for coming to our fundraising site!

We hope you’ll be as excited as we are about our upcoming Gandhi Peace Tour 2010!

(This is Sarah: Don can hardly sit still—and it isn’t happening till August! He’ll have ants in his pants all summer!!)

Here’s the scoop:

I (Don) have been portraying Mahatma Gandhi in what I call ‘Participative Theater’ for over three years now. It’s been an amazing experience, totally life changing for me, and reported by hundreds of attendees as ‘moving—heart opening—an incredible portrayal!’

In doing these portrayals, I’ve also been invited to speak on Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence, peace and social activism. Which brought me all the way last September to India to the 4th Annual Student Peace Festival organized by Parmod Sharma, now a friend of mine, and his NGO, Yuvsatta (Youth Power!). I was invited to the Festival with my wonderful daughter, Lexy, and we were so warmly received that it was astonishing to me!

[And the Indian food ...and just the aroma of Indian food. . . Oh, my God!]

So, as often happens with such events, I made several connections while there, which have resulted in invitations to come back to India this summer.

Here’s my itinerary:

 to participate in the 5th Annual Student Peace Festival back in Chandigarh, India, but this year to lead three large-group facilitated discussions between the Indian and Pakistani students on how to establish peace between their two countries. Here’s Mr. Sharma’s Yuvsatta website link: www.yuvsatta.org.

[And here’s a short video on last year’s Student Peace Festival: http://www.youtube.com/watch... ]

 plus an invitation to my friend Anugraha’s conference, “The All-Asia Conference on Sustainable Development” in Bangalore, India to lead workshops on non-violence and how it pertains to sustainability. Anu’s organization is called Global Citizens for Sustainable Development—go to his Facebook page to join this wonderful group: http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...

 And finally to teach and work with the staff at a wonderful school in rural India, the Shishu Panchayat School (Children’s Parliament School), headed by my friend, Mr. A.R. Patil and his staff. Sarah’s going to join me at this point of the trip, and she’ll be making connections with the school staff and students between her 5th Grade class’ Sustainability Curriculum here in Santa Fe and the work of Mr. Patil’s school. She’s setting up email pen pals and a blog between her children and the children at the Shishu Panchayat School—very awesome!

o We’ve already started this project by holding video conference calls once a month between our home in New Mexico and the school in rural Belgaum Province, India—a very wonderful blessing and connection started already! [This kind of technology is incredible!][We can almost smell the curries and spices of India while we’re on these wonderful video conference calls with the students and staff!]

o My role will be to work with the staff and students on Gandhi’s ideas of non-violence and sustainability in today’s world, a challenge that they are very keen about and already taking on in our video calls.

 On top of those three invitations, I’ve also been invited by the Sri Lanka United Nations Friendship Organization to help lead a “Peace Tour” in Sri Lanka in each of their nine provinces. We’ll be leading what we’re calling ‘Healing Circles of Reparation’ following the long civil war there, and to start Peace Clubs in the cities we travel to for the young people of Sri Lanka.

Needless to say, this is all so incredibly wonderful and exciting! It really is hard to contain myself, so I’m just not trying to!

I’m so excited to invite you to help us make this trip a reality--So here’s where you come in:

Our project on Kickstarter is to raise funds for the making of a documentary film about the trip! [Heck of a challenge!]

We’ll be filming the workshops, groups and teachings in each of the three sites in India, plus the Peace Tour in Sri Lanka, and coming back to the States to put it together.

The money will be used for video equipment, travel and production expenses of this film.

Cool, huh!!?? I think so too—totally cool!

We’ve put together a long list of awards we’ll be giving out for everyone’s support of this project, and right now, I’m asking you to take a look at those awards, feel in your heart how much would feel comfortable for you to give, and then with our greatest gratitude, donate the amount you’d feel good about.

We’ll be keeping all of our PeaceMakers [like you!] up to speed via email and our Facebook page—here’s the link for our parent org, The Gandhi Global Peace Association: http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php... ---and posting to this page our daily diary while we’re on the ‘Gandhi Peace Tour 2010’ for all of our funders and members.

Feel free to join our group at Facebook at this link too!

That’s it—Thanks for reading this and for donating to our ‘Gandhi Peace Tour 2010’ documentary film! When you get a copy of the completed film, I think you’ll really like it—and you’ll know that you had a great part in making it happen!

In Peace,

Don & Sarah

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