Main Index --- Treatments Index --- Circulars Index
COMPASSION RESPONSE NETWORK CIRCULAR No 25
Kinshasa Income Generating Activity Commences
CRN has now been able to send the following amounts to kick-start the project for income generating activities for 50 people living with HIV in Kinshasa. US$1,500 was sent on 1/November/06, US$1,046.40 on 11/December/06, and US$387 on 18/January/07.This is now enough to kick-start three vege growing points (and largely fund a fourth point), together with part of the money set aside for food support during the difficult three months before the vegetables start to produce, and part wages for two project facilitators.
The project was launched on 20/November/06, for the first 2 vege points. Different phases of the work have been started, and happened as planned, despite some difficulties: the land has been designated, and the work commenced; reclaiming, weeding, ploughing and compost heaps have been prepared. Then the seeds have been planted. Therefore the work went as planned. The crops do not take much time to mature, so perhaps by the beginning of March, the people living with HIV who began the first 2 veges points will already proceed to the harvest and the sale of crops, so thus they can begin monthly repayments to the community fund.
From money CRN sent to Kinshasa in Mid December, a third vege point has been launched, with steps as before; reclaiming, weeding and ploughing with sowing of seeds by 4th January 2007.
A donation of A$500 = US$387 sent by CRN in mid-January allowed a major part of the material to be bought for a 4th vege point. CRN needs to send a further US$138 to fully fund the 4th vege point. There are hopes to start this 4th vege point some time in February.
When the 5th vege point is also funded, then all the first stage will be accomplished, and the community fund can be made available to provide loans for other income generating activities.
At the time of a meeting, while resting during a working day, the people living with HIV reported: “we have well welcomed the assistance in food, we are very happy, it permits us to hold the situation in waiting that our produce permits us to become independent. The launching of the project in its first phases encourage us a lot, the work helps us, the work frees us of idleness, of a too tense preoccupation on our own health situation, it permits us to forget a moment our conditions as people living with HIV, it gives us back our dignity, we feel useful to the society, we feel “free”, there is the joy to be able to produce and to become morally independent”.
CRN is also funding, in this first stage, the part wages of two project facilitators.
The project manager is named Mr Tsimba. He visualises the progress of the entire project and community fund, receives and allocates the project money for its various purposes; food support for the 50 people living with HIV, part wages for project facilitators, purchase of items for the vege growing points, supervision of monthly repayments back into the community fund, providing overall budgetary reports.
The leader of the works also acts as a Findhorn spokesperson. The Findhorn aspect proceeds slowly but surely. Blandine (who has received and read the book, The Findhorn Garden), loves her role and she realises it well. Albert has discussed with her about this work and about the Findhorn Spirit. At the time of the work (coming together once a week), there is usually the meal for all the group.
Blandine has directed the works, she co-ordinates activities, she already helped people to prepare the compost heaps. At the time of weekly work gatherings she also holds a short meeting, speaking about the group spirit and the sense of the community work. Lately she introduced the precise explanation on Findhorn, the friends were happy enough; in the past we had already spoke briefly to them about Findhorn.
The Next Step to Develop A People’s Movement in Africa
We in affluent countries can do much in the way of support for the work in Africa, especially through a meditation of synthesis, by which we identify with the millions in Africa and the world with HIV/AIDS. Yet on the physical and practical level, those most able to attune to the invocative cry for help coming from the African people with HIV, will be the small group in Kinshasa who have confirmed their desire to “make emerge a People's Movement of Africa”, and who have themselves so closely experienced the tragedy of HIV/AIDS.
So it is, that we invite our friends in Kinshasa, about the need to ever identify with the struggles of the millions in Africa with HIV/AIDS, and to open their hearts to these cries for help and ever respond with love.
The most immediate practical need is with respect to those of the 50 people living with HIV who do not yet have jobs. The first of the vege growing points will soon start to be productive, and the group has pledged to share by way of food support to those who do not yet have income generating activities. Let us support them through our prayers, that they are guided by Spirit to share in the way of true community, so that none go hungry.
In the past, we have sought to strengthen the hands of those few (6 to 10 people living with HIV) meeting on the twelfth day of each month, enabling them to awaken a desire to serve humanity. All we have done was to apply the spiritual laws of unity and goodwill, and we have given support where we are able, and we have invited them to do likewise. This is the way Spirit works, it is all so simple, but the desire to serve humanity must be great, and there will be need to make sacrifices along the way.
Truly this small group in Kinshasa is learning to use and apply the art of manifestation in their own lives. The Spirit is truly working through them.
Now the challenge is to share the wonders of the art of manifestation with the 50 people living with HIV, so that their hands become strengthened so to manifest the dreams of their collective heart. In the past, it is only a small number of the people living with HIV who have helped develop the project. For most of the 50 people living with HIV, the problem of hunger is still too great. As Albert described it in a letter, “the famished stomach has no ears”. And so organising the 50 people living with HIV to even open up and share their further dreams is going to take time.
This must be the next step if we are to form a People’s Movement. And only as the small core group in Kinshasa attunes to and identifies with the deeper dreams of all the 50, once they have food in their stomachs, then we must teach to the 50 also about the art of manifestation, and the beautiful and joyous life we can lead if love rules our life, and we desire above all to serve humanity. Then the 50 may learn to manifest the deeper dreams of their hearts, and as our friends in Africa communicate their experiences to us, people in affluent countries may wonder at what is happening and may want to support them.
To develop a People’s Movement in relation to HIV/AIDS in Africa, the primary need is to listen to the invocative cry for help coming forth from the millions of people in Africa with HIV/AIDS. The task then is to re-connect these many people in such great need with the sacred within themselves. This is a journey yet to unfold, and we in affluent countries can do much through our support.
Restoring the Kingdom of Heaven upon Earth.
F indhorn provides the spiritual pattern for anchoring the Divine Plan upon Earth. This is a major premise that has guided the activity of CRN over the past few years. I will not debate this point. Rather, let the fruit bear witness to the Truth. The wonders of Findhorn are evident for all to bear witness. Those who doubt, let them read the story of Findhorn for themselves. The books are available through Findhorn Press.
The Findhorn garden and community was founded in the 1960s and 1970s in northern Scotland. Yet since the 1970s, the emphasis of the Findhorn Foundation has moved away from its former focus of demonstrating the manifestation of the Divine Plan within a local community. The formerly local community has spread its seeds around the world, and now its advocates are more likely to speak in terms of the planetary village.
From the start, Findhorn has provided the inspiration to the founders of CRN for applying the art of manifestation to any problem we would choose. Our more subjective goal has ever been to establish a pattern for anchoring the Divine Plan into the mass consciousness. Over the past year, in developing in embryo the first stages of a People’s Movement to develop a direct compassionate response to the problem of HIV/AIDS, that pattern now been clearly demonstrated to the world. The embryo People’s Movement was not formed by the founders of CRN, but by a small group of arbitrarily selected people with HIV, who are now invoking and applying the art of manifestation.
HIV/AIDS in Africa is where the invocative cry of the people for help has been the most visibly expressed, and so it was right that CRN, with its limited physical resources, should first focus upon this problem.
But from the beginning, the founders of CRN have been aware of a more universal problem: How does humanity play its part in the great work prophesied in all the world scriptures, for the restoration upon Earth of the Divine Plan, the anchoring of the Kingdom of Heaven upon Earth?
Many are the prophecies that the Russian people will play a special part in answering this more universal question. For example, Our Lady spoke to the children of Medjugoria, that Russia is “the place where God will be most glorified”. Many Russians themselves are awaiting the time for the true outer work to begin. The events in Kinshasa over the year 2006, demonstrating a pattern for anchoring the Divine Plan into the mass consciousness. are the sign that the time has come. The suffering of humanity is so acute. Need arises and urgency decrees. This pattern must now be applied to the more universal challenge of anchoring the Divine Plan upon Earth.
As Russia is the place where the people are most invocative for this more universal transformation, we propose the urgency to establish a Findhorn style garden and community in Russia. As with the original Findhorn community in Scotland, the focus upon local community will be temporary and transitional, but as with the Scottish experiment, temporary focus through a local community seems the only way to anchor these revolutionary purposes into humanity’s consciousness. The Russian people dearly need a pure focal point through which to grow and expand.
Those who pioneer this Findhorn-style community in Russia must offer themselves as world servers, invocative to become the instruments, the hands and feet for this global experiment. Their invocation must extend in two directions,
1) to reconnect with the sacred in its most universal sense. Their allegiance must be through no single religion, but rather through all religions. As with Findhorn, the people will be invited to each develop a direct personal relationship with God, or with divinity or the universe. They are invited to see divinity expressing through all creation, through all the kingdoms of nature, and expressing through reverence to Gaia, our beloved Mother Earth. For we each are a part of the consciousness of Gaia, and through Her, we are one with all beings upon this Earth.
2) to apply the pattern for manifesting of the Divine Plan on Earth to every facet of human need and sorrow. This pattern has been demonstrated through the example of Findhorn. The pattern to awaken and transform the mass consciousness has been demonstrated through the recent events in Kinshasa. The need is global and the compassionate response must be global. Rather than focussing just upon HIV/AIDS, the need is to respond to a thousand profound concerns of the heart that lead humanity towards suffering. Thus the people shall become the instruments through which the invocation, “Let Light and Love and Power Restore the Plan on Earth” becomes manifest in actuality.
This will require working in common endeavour under the Law of Inclusiveness and identifying with the many in need through using a Meditation of Synthesis. Thus the group helps construct the Rainbow Bridge or continuous energy channel connecting God's will with a direct physical response to humanity in need. It will require development of projects of compassionate response, from a point of genesis as inspired through an intuitive understanding of God's Plan, through to a point of manifestation, thus demonstrating the Science of Manifestation.
The group will know when the local work has been successful. The sign will be when the Christ Force begins to flow in force and power down the Rainbow Bridge, thus transforming all facets of human consciousness, religious, political, economic, social, cultural, educational. The goal is to demonstrate true Brotherhood in action, which can only be done through reconnection with the sacred and opening the heart and responding to all cries of suffering from humanity. When the Christ Force begins to flow freely, then must the local Russian Findhorn-style community scatter its seeds to the four winds.
The Christ has said to us, “The works that I do shall ye do also, and greater works shall ye do.” These transformations shall come about only when a sufficient number of servers accept this challenge and make it live through invoking their personal adoption of the Christ consciousness, the Christ ministry.
The Financial Goals for the Kinshasa Project
Our Inner Planning Circle of CRN has a goal to raise from the public, the following amounts of money for the 50 living with HIV in Kinshasa.
1) US$9,000 is to be donated into a community fund. Members of the 50 people living with HIV may borrow from the fund in order to kick-start income generating activities. They will then repay the loan by monthly repayments. Once the 50 people living with HIV have organised themselves into a formal organisation, CRN will negotiate with the directors of that organisation to hand over control of the community fund to the people living with HIV.
2) US$2,760 is to be donated to pay part wages for a year for five project facilitators,
3) US$1,000 is to be donated to provide food support for the 50 people living with HIV, especially in the first difficult three months.
During Nov/06, Dec/06 and Jan/07, CRN has donated US$2,930 to the Kinshasa project. US$1,600 of this is going to the community fund, US$1,000 is going towards food support for the 50 people living with HIV in the difficult three months before the vege crops start producing, and US$330 is going towards part time wages of project facilitators.
We need to raise a further US$7,400 for the community fund, and US$2,430 to pay part wages for a year for five project facilitators. That comes to a further total of about US$9,830 to raise for the project over the next year or two. Our target is to raise a minimum of A$500 = about US$380 a month.
My personal donation from my disability pension of A$100 a month just balances the yearly administrative costs for CRN. Therefore all donations received from the public can go direct to the project for the 50 with HIV in Kinshasa. At the moment, CRN is receiving regular donations from the public of about A$100 to A$150 a month. We urgently need further donations, or preferable monthly regular commitments.
Spiritual Support from Affluent Countries
The need for financial support for the project in Kinshasa to establish a community fund is great. But greater still is the need for spiritual support, through our love and our prayers.
The greatest need of all is for some to make the great sacrifice of identifying with the 50 in Kinshasa with HIV, and indeed the millions around the world with HIV. It has been through a Meditation of Synthesis that the founders of CRN have been able to continue the work, despite limited practical and financial support. We are one with our friends in Africa, and Russia and India. When they are in need our heart reaches out to them, closer than brother or sister they are to us. And so naturally, we share to the degree we are able with our limited resources, so that the work might proceed. If the work is to expand, many more now need to enter into this commitment of unconditional love.
We read in the New Testament, Matthew 25:31-46, “whatever you did for one of the least of these, (fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, invited the stranger in, clothed the needy, cared for the sick, visited the prisoner) you did for me (the Christ).”
Christ identifies with all of the poor and wretched of the earth. If we then shun the poor and wretched (or what is the same, maintain the inertia of inaction) then we also shun the Christ. If we invoke the reappearance of the Christ among us, then we must become the agents for lifting up the Christ through our compassionate actions to those in greatest need. There is no other way than for us to offer to become the hands and feet for manifesting the Divine Plan upon Earth. The great law of our age is to love our neighbour as ourselves, and to love our God with all our mind and heart and soul.
“It is the Fire of Love which He (the Christ) will bring; it is the message of the purificatory fire which He will sound; he will not teach anent the waters of purification, as has hitherto been the symbolic imparted truth; He will impart the fire which burns and destroys all barriers in man’s nature, all separating walls between individuals, between groups and between nations.” (Discipleship in the New Age Vol I, p722, by Alice Bailey).
If we truly love our neighbour, we are then called to do likewise, to help direct the Fire of Love to help heal the sorrows of this world.
I have shared about the wonders that are happening in Kinshasa. From among the most wretched of this earth, a small group in Kinshasa with HIV has committed to service of humanity, and are beginning to manifest a People’s Movement by applying the art of manifestation to the desires of their heart.
How can I share my belief that this group in Kinshasa is truly overshadowed by the Spirit? If so few understand the importance and urgency of what is happening, if the response to the need remains inadequate, then I prayed for understanding for how I can respond as the Christ would respond. And so then the Spirit guided me to say, “For the things that have happened and will happen in Kinshasa, and that will happen in Russia, I will dance to God’s glory until even the rocks and stones sing out ‘hosanna’ in praise to God’s glory.”
So must it be, that even in our remote and tiny parish of Gosnells in Australia, a few of us will gather together to sing and dance to God’s glory for the wonders that are happening at this time. Our invocation will be that Gosnells shall become a place where God is most glorified. Our prayer also is that others will open their hearts and join us in our endeavours. Your love and prayer are urgently needed.
Yours in love and light,
David Keane,
Secretary, Compassion Response Network