Sangha Metta Project - Thailand & Eastern Asia

A crucial part of training is close contact between monks and sufferers, which includes monks having to accept and eat alms food prepared by people with HIV/AIDS. Sensitised in such basic ways, the hope is that they will be able to work freely with affected people.

Activities include:

1. Education - seminars, training programmes and workshops for monks, nuns, novices and Buddhist laity.
2. Youth activities - education on HIV/AIDS and narcotics awareness, prevention and care through youth camps and other youth activities.
3. Home/Community visits - to provide moral support, Buddhist-based counseling, advice on self/home-based care and give donations.
4. Vocational training - provide venues and materials, coordinate with trainers, funding sources and marketing.
5. Temple activities - daily/weekly meditation retreats, care and/or ordination for boys orphaned by HIV/AIDS, coordination with nuns to care for girls and women affected by HIV/AIDS.
6. Resource centre - printed/audio-visual materials, brochures, posters and speakers.
7. Education Fund - for children orphaned or affected by HIV/AIDS.
8. Milk bank - for children orphaned or affected by HIV/AIDS.
9. Medicine bank - for people living with HIV/AIDS.
10. Sanghathan (alms) bank.
11. Funeral robes bank - for families of people who have died of AIDS.

Development Issues
HIV/AIDS.

The Sangha Metta Project is unique in that it was initiated by monks themselves in response to the need for Buddhist monks to have a more active role in HIV/AIDS prevention and care. Taking the Buddha's teachings as their inspiration, monks concluded that a core aspect of HIV/AIDS was ignorance about the condition among both the sufferers and the general public.

Istrong contrast with their formal roles, project-trained monks have become active in community work. Using Buddhist ethics as their guideline, they now teach villagers how to avoid high-risk behaviour, help to set up support groups, train people with HIV/AIDS in handicrafts, donate their alms and take care of AIDS orphans. Because local people are accustomed to telling monks their troubles, the latter have become a conduit for identifying many secret HIV-positive people who, once identified, can be referred to support groups and public assistance programmes. "HIV-friendly" temples encourage these people to participate in community activities. They also provide training in meditation as well as grow and dispense herbal medicines in collaboration with local hospitals. This more active role among monks is strengthening trust between them and the people. It is also developing community potential and encouraging greater grass roots participation in solving problem at the local level. Because the project has given monks a way to become actively involved in their communities, something they have always wanted, it is spreading into other regions of Thailand, as well as neighbouring countries such as Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Southern China, Vietnam, Mongolia, and Bhutan.

Sangha Metta has now crossed religious borders and is being used as a model for other faiths as well. Training has been conducted for Christian, Hindu, and Islamic religious leaders from Sri Lanka. Members of the organisation also served as resource people at an interfaith congress in Nepal attended by religious leaders from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Bhutan. All sat together alongside Buddhist monks to brainstorm on how they can work together to prevent the impacts of HIV and AIDS on their communities, and help to develop their communities to withstand the impacts of modernisation. (Organisers removed the word "Buddhist" from the training module to help make the process a humanitarian activity with participants realising that "we are all in this world together and consequently have to work together for the benefit of all, regardless of faith.")