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Amida Trust
VOLUNTARY SERVICE SCHEME

The Buddhist House
12 Coventry Road
Narborough LE19 2BR
Leicestershire U.K.
Tel: 0116.286.7476

MAIN SCHEME
The Amida Trust Voluntary Service Scheme has grown out of a range of initiatives that the Trust has taken in the past to assist disadvantaged groups and to support Buddhists engaging in Social or humanitarian action in various parts of the world.

The way that the Scheme currently operates is as follows. Each autumn, commencing in mid–September, there is a training and preparation course run at The Buddhist House in UK. Volunteers who wish to participate in the scheme should attend this training programme. It includes elements that are particularly directed at the needs of volunteers and elements that are part of the wider educational programme of the Trust, as well as team–building activities and community life. On completion of the training programme volunteers may be sponsored to participate in Amida Trust schemes overseas. The volunteers participating in the 2004 scheme were placed in India in November 2004.

Generally, volunteers will spend three to six months on placement. This will be followed by a short debriefing period after return to the UK. Thereafter, volunteers are free to leave the scheme or to sign up for another round, or to consider other possibilities of progression within Amida Trust.

Volunteers should be adults who are willing to devote about nine months to the scheme. They should be able to take initiative and also work as part of a team. They need not be Pureland Buddhists, but they should have a sympathy for Buddhist principles and a willingness to participate in Buddhist practice. Volunteer placements may be in centres or projects that belong to any Buddhist denomination and volunteers are expected to participate in the practice that is normal to the centre where they are placed while they are there. This is a condition of participation in the scheme.
India Project
Amida Trust has rented a house in Delhi as a base. The building houses both the Amida Trust team and a group associated with the Universal Maitri Foundation who are there as guests of Amida Trust. The centre offers Buddhist activities, community work and the teaching of English. Beneficiaries of the scheme include many severely disadvantaged by the Indian social system or by being refugees.
Vietnam
Amida Trust and our sister organisation Amida West have developed a valuable partnership with the Nirvana Pagoda, a Buddhist temple near Ho Chi Minh City which supports large numbers of orphan children. Dharmavidya and Prasada visited the temple in February 2004 and since then we have raised a sum of money to assist with the building of a new dormitory block. We anticipate that volunteers from the Amida Voluntary Service Scheme will go to the Pagoda at a future date to assist with English teaching and other supportive tasks.
Zambia
Amida Trust supports the Tithandizane Project in Eastern Province which provides primary health care and health education to the local area. This project has been built up from scratch with the co-operation of tribes people who have even made the bricks for the buildings.
Sri Lanka
Amida Trust became involved in Sri Lanka recently through tsunami relief work. Now there are some prospects of developing relief and holiday schemes with children in the camps where many of the tsunami victims currently live.
NAMO AMIDA BU
Aims of the Voluntary Service Scheme
The scheme aims to:
• support projects in disadvantaged countries that serve the needs of their most disadvantaged citizens;
• support individuals who, through voluntary work, wish to put Buddhist principles of universal compassion into practical effect;
• make humanitarian action an integral part of Buddhist practice;
• encourage Buddhist organisations to become involved in the large scale social problems that beset the world;
• help individuals to grow in faith and confidence, learn new skills and extend their understanding of the Dharma in a practical context;
• foster friendship, internationalism, and a spirit of working together for the benefit of all sentient beings.
• foster good relations and co–operation between different schools of Buddhism;

Click this link for information on the Activist Week at Amida France
Further Volunteer Scheme Information on the Buddhist Psychology website
Ad Hoc & Short–term Volunteering
We can place a certain number of short term volunteers who do not participate in the main scheme. These may receive some more brief training, as, for instance, by participating in the one week Activist Training at Amida France at the end of May before, for instance, being placed in, say, Sri Lanka to help with a children's holiday scheme. A variety of opportunities come up fairly regularly. Please enquire.

Intense and Inspiring: Fully Engaged Buddhism Training
The first Nine Day Training on the Fully Engaged Buddhism took place in autumn 2002. One participant called it intense and inspiring. Another said it was “Not a course, but real life learning experience in a lively learning community”. The nine days included study, fieldwork, networking exercises, presentations by visiting speakers, sociodrama, Buddhist practice, models of engaged Buddhism, and many opportunities for reflection, sharing, discussion and peer learning. Since then we have held many more such intensive courses. If you are serious about engaged Buddhism this is the programme for you. Details