Help us create a Buddhist "nun-profit"
Donation protected
We dream of a stable home for Buddhist nuns, a place for prayer, contemplation and retreat for women from all walks of life, all races, all geographies.
After over ten years as wandering nuns, living and serving local communities in India and Mexico, our Spanish-speaking spiritual community has grown wide and vast and we now need to settle down in order to provide more sustainable and consistent support and service.
We have lived together for over a decade as sisters and have learned how to do community, following Buddhist monastic models and adapting according to our own experiences and circumstances. There are now four of us, all Spanish speaking, from Colombia, Puerto Rico, New York and Switzerland. We run multiple projects in Spanish that we offer free of charge online (a study program, online meditation halls and more ). The pandemic has made even more obvious how great a need there is for open and free access to tools in Spanish for working with one's own minds. We especially see a thirst for spiritual community, both among those living at home in Latin America and those living far from home as immigrants.
Over the last few years, it has become increasingly clear that our international community’s needs would be best served by us putting down our roots. As we gave our energy to traveling from one community to the next, the constant travel took its toll on our health. Our need to create a legal infrastructure is now especially urgent: Two of our nuns are from overseas and we need to be able to normalize their immigration status here. One of our nuns is stuck in her home country, and this is now the longest period that we have been apart since we founded the community in 2009.
For all this to happen, we need to create a non-profit organization. We have found a lawyer who has worked with other Buddhist non-profits to guide us through the process—Alex Halpern—and his fees combined with the filing fees for the non-profit as well as the tax exempt status will come in just under $3,000. We've set this fundraiser at $3,000 and any excess will go towards our second project - down payment on land!
The donations that cover our monthly living costs come mainly from Spanish speakers from Latin America, and it seems fair that we request support of English speakers as well. We are asking for help to cover these startup fees so that we can take this important step together with people who might find it meaningful to support our presence in the US.
With this non-profit—or "nun-profit" as a friend calls it—we hope to begin a journey that will lead us to a home with land to develop our spiritual practice, support our online community and engage in conservation project. We imagine working with other women to reforest denuded fields and reconnect fragmented habitats, reciting prayers and mantras as we plant. We invite you to take this first step with us, and hope to welcome you one day to meditate together and help us plant tall trees!
After over ten years as wandering nuns, living and serving local communities in India and Mexico, our Spanish-speaking spiritual community has grown wide and vast and we now need to settle down in order to provide more sustainable and consistent support and service.
We have lived together for over a decade as sisters and have learned how to do community, following Buddhist monastic models and adapting according to our own experiences and circumstances. There are now four of us, all Spanish speaking, from Colombia, Puerto Rico, New York and Switzerland. We run multiple projects in Spanish that we offer free of charge online (a study program, online meditation halls and more ). The pandemic has made even more obvious how great a need there is for open and free access to tools in Spanish for working with one's own minds. We especially see a thirst for spiritual community, both among those living at home in Latin America and those living far from home as immigrants.
Over the last few years, it has become increasingly clear that our international community’s needs would be best served by us putting down our roots. As we gave our energy to traveling from one community to the next, the constant travel took its toll on our health. Our need to create a legal infrastructure is now especially urgent: Two of our nuns are from overseas and we need to be able to normalize their immigration status here. One of our nuns is stuck in her home country, and this is now the longest period that we have been apart since we founded the community in 2009.
For all this to happen, we need to create a non-profit organization. We have found a lawyer who has worked with other Buddhist non-profits to guide us through the process—Alex Halpern—and his fees combined with the filing fees for the non-profit as well as the tax exempt status will come in just under $3,000. We've set this fundraiser at $3,000 and any excess will go towards our second project - down payment on land!
The donations that cover our monthly living costs come mainly from Spanish speakers from Latin America, and it seems fair that we request support of English speakers as well. We are asking for help to cover these startup fees so that we can take this important step together with people who might find it meaningful to support our presence in the US.
With this non-profit—or "nun-profit" as a friend calls it—we hope to begin a journey that will lead us to a home with land to develop our spiritual practice, support our online community and engage in conservation project. We imagine working with other women to reforest denuded fields and reconnect fragmented habitats, reciting prayers and mantras as we plant. We invite you to take this first step with us, and hope to welcome you one day to meditate together and help us plant tall trees!
Fundraising team (2)
Dharmadatta Community
Organizer
Orange, VA
Karen Derris
Team member