By Raimund Hopf
A European Buddhist organization, Mitgefühl in Aktion (Compassion in Action), has recently been established with the intention of partnering with BGR in support of our hunger-relief and education projects. The organization represents Buddhists in three German-language countries of Europe: Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.
In 2015, when many Syrian refugees came to Germany seeking refuge from the war raging in their own country, a wave of compassion arose among German citizens and many people helped the refugees in a selfless way, by providing emergency aid or even accommodating them in their homes. Even though the political situation made it difficult to maintain this kindness, we were all moved by a deeply human compassion for others. At that time, some Buddhists wondered why we, who proclaim compassion as a fundamental Buddhist virtue, had not established our own public aid organizations and relief projects.
I had been following the work of Buddhist Global Relief with great interest for a long time and saw in it an important contribution to the problems of this world. When Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi came to Hamburg for a conference in June 2018, I asked him if he would help us organize a branch of BGR in Europe. Bhante was open to this idea, but recommended that it should be set up as an independent organization, which would then be ready to function as a partner of BGR.
To prepare for the establishment of such an organization, we decided to launch an appeal to see how many interested people would be willing to come forward and help with the work. The leading Buddhist magazine Buddhismus Aktuell gave me the opportunity to combine an article on the world food situation with an appeal to found an aid organization to tackle the problem of global hunger. After my article was published, about twelve people contacted me to express their interest in founding such an organization. They were from different Buddhist traditions and from all three German-speaking countries (Germany, Switzerland, and Austria). Even an engineer, who had worked for many years with large international development aid organizations, expressed an interest in joining our endeavor.
After many conversations via telephone and emails, the first founders’ meeting took place in a Tibetan Buddhist center in Berlin. In advance we had already drafted bylaws with the help of a lawyer for association law. Immediately, we felt great solidarity with each other and privileged to be involved in such an important effort. We started our weekend gathering with meditation and homage to the Triple Gem, and then literally worked all day on our statutes and goals. At the end of the weekend, we each proposed a sum of money that we could donate to get the organization off the ground. We ended our meeting with a constitution, an elected board of directors consisting of four people, a set of goals, and a founding budget of about 3,000 euros. We also decided on a name for our organization: Mitgefühl in Aktion (MiA), which in English means “compassion in action.”
Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi agreed to serve as patron of the new organization and there followed a lot of discussion about the aims, organizational form, and ways we would cooperate. We learned from our American friends how to use Zoom for video conference calls, and our founding team often met via video conference to plan the new organization. After further votes on the statutes, these were then formally checked by a notary and submitted to the district court in Hamburg.
While we were waiting for recognition as a non-profit organisation, working groups were formed to deal with publicity and the necessary communication structure. A logo was designed and a website was built mia.eu.com), and we spread the word in our environment. We found out that many Buddhists and non-Buddhists can identify with the concern of active compassion and spontaneously showed interest and support. We were also able to win well-known representatives of German Buddhism as members and supporters. The German Buddhist Union (DBU) and the European Buddhist Union showed interest, and we will be able to present MiA to representatives of many Buddhist groups at the next general meeting of the DBU in Berlin (planned for April).
In November 2019 we received confirmation that our association has been officially recognized as a non-profit organization for development work. In the meantime, the responsible tax office has confirmed that we are tax-exempt and entitled to issue donation receipts. Now the work can begin.
The staff of BGR suggested to us several projects that we can help to finance, and we have decided on three initial projects that particularly tackle the roots of malnutrition. These involve the education of young women and girls from Burma, Bangladesh, and Cambodia. As a next step we invited Ven. Bodhi and BGR’s executive director, Kim Behan, to join us for our “kick off” public event in late June 2020, at which we will present our work to a wider public. The Tibetan center in Hamburg has provided us with rooms free of charge and we are very grateful how well our request has been received.
By the time this article is published, we will already have held our first big general meeting in Hamburg and will be organizing the kick-off event. As soon as a flyer and corresponding presentations are ready, we will solicit support from Buddhists and Buddhist groups, and also from schools, companies, and organizations. We intend to begin as a volunteer organization and after some time consider whether we should supplement our volunteer helpers with professional staff. At this stage we have committed to channel all project-related donations without deductions toward direct help for people in need. For the maintenance of the organization, the annual contributions of our members are sufficient for us.
A major challenge we face is the currently rapidly changing global situation. At present, the coronavirus has become a major issue in Germany, revealing, as never before, the fragile human condition. On the one hand, it highlights the individual fear of personal safety and dread of scarcity, which is currently manifested in panic buying and leads to empty shelves in supermarkets. On the other hand, entire states are suddenly ready to make enormous efforts to contain or combat this pandemic. For the first time in the history of Europe, an entire country, in this case Italy, is declaring itself a protected zone. The German Government is prepared to invest billions of euros in the fight against the virus and the necessary medical measures. Major events are being canceled, schools closed, flights canceled, etc. This shows like never before that we as human beings have the wonderful ability to help each other and respond together to crises.
As MiA we want to apply this awareness to the global situation. Every day 24,000 people die of malnutrition, including over 8,000 children. Let’s not forget that we have a good vaccine for that illness: food! If we were only able to apply the current awareness of collective global responsibility for our health to the far greater number of people suffering from poverty and hunger, and to the accelerating climate crisis, we could do a great deal more to create a fairer and more livable world. Let us get down to it!
Raimund Hopf, from Germany, was a Buddhist monk for several years in Thailand. At present he offers meditation retreats and sutta classes with a fellowship in Hamburg called Suttanta.
