Sustainability & Resilience

INTERGENERATIONAL COMMUNITY

We value the experience and wisdom of those who have stepped forward into sanyas. Your support for the Sustainability Fund ensures that those who have made this deep commitment can continue to live and serve at the Ashram and be stewards of the teachings for future generations. In addition, some of our Yasodhara teachers are now elders. Their years of service in offering classes and workshops worldwide have opened the way for hundreds of seekers to bring greater awareness and quality into their lives. We want to continue to offer financial support to ensure our elder teachers can continue to renew themselves through Ashram visits and courses. We also provide bursaries for young adults with limited funds to participate and learn through our karma yoga programs.

CONCERN FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

The Ashram is at the leading edge of the worldwide movement to prevent and reduce environmental impacts. In response to our efforts, the Ashram was awarded the FortisBC PowerSense Conservation Excellence Award in 2008 for our commitment to reduce energy consumption by adapting innovative and efficient technologies and solutions. In 2009 we were awarded the Environmentally Responsible Tourism Award from Tourism BC that acknowledges outstanding leadership in environmental sustainability. In 2012, after an intensive awareness program, Yasodhara Ashram achieved carbon neutral status. Environmental action is an important part of our social responsibility, a practice of the basic yogic principle of ahimsa (non-injury). In these times of dramatic changes in the environment, we also take responsibility for our resources through planning and interconnection with like-minded individuals, groups and communities. As well as energy efficiency, we continue to develop resiliency in our food systems and community emergency planning and services.

FOOD RESILIENCY

Our garden produces approximately 20 percent of the food we eat – 11,000 meals out of the 55,000 we serve annually. Ashram menus are based on what is available seasonally from our garden. In an aim to reduce our carbon footprint and support the local economy, the Ashram purchases an additional 50 percent of what we consume from local farmers and orchardists. Recognizing resilience is built on relationships, we support many local growers and emerging farms through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs and partnerships. This is all part of what we call “food flow,” the growing, procurement, processing, preserving and consuming of what we eat. Steadily built over the last seven years, today it is an ever-growing organic system that flexibly responds to opportunities and offers succession of experience through our Learning Residency Program. Strengthened through a network of relationships, the Ashram’s food flow is a model of a resilient, small-scale community-led food system.