Guest Speaker (Dec 2001)
Acharya Shambhushivananda Avadhuta (Dada) is a yogic monk and chancellor of Ananda Marga Gurukula, an international network of over 1200 schools and research institutions. He received his PhD in Business and Applied Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1992 he was the recipient of the International Mahatma Gandhi Award. For over 20 years, he has been a monk and teacher of meditation. He was the keynote speaker on several global forums, including the Lithuanian Parliament on the occasion of their independence from USSR, the Kyoto Forum of Japan, and the Parliament of World Religions in CapeTown, South Africa.
Ananda Marga Gurukula, founded in 1990 by Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar, was created with the vision of hastening the advent of a society in which there is love, peace, understanding, inspiration, justice and health for all beings. Ananda Marga Gurukula views education as a broad platform to provide, among other things: a conducive environment for students' physical, social, intellectual, creative and spiritual development, to encourage the development of micro-enterprises for sustainability of social service projects, to participate in the building of a global eco-village network, and to place volunteers across cultures to facilitate understanding and build meaningful relationships that are the impetus for social change. Dada works to develop and coordinate all of the activities of the Gurukula network.
Prior to the Gurukula project, Dada has worked to develop and disseminate the ideas of PROUT (PROgressive Utilization Theory), a socio-economic model that aims to build a social order based on local self-reliance, rational allocatation resources for the benefit of the entire society, and co-operative enterprises. He is the author of a book titled Prout: Neo-Humanistic Economics.
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