Auroville International USA

09/22/2026

What does equipping the next generation for a fast-changing world actually look like on the ground?

For Thamarai — an AVI USA project partner near Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India — it looks like this: children getting hands-on with robotics and 3D printing, right alongside reading, writing, storytelling, and gardening, in a fuller after-school program serving 90 children and youth this year.

In Tamil, "Thamarai" means lotus 🪷: a symbol of rising, against the odds, into something beautiful — which is exactly the vision behind this work.

This reel offers a glimpse of what that looks like in practice: young people building skills for the modern world through hands-on, experiential learning — testing, asking questions, and problem-solving together during a recent workshop.

The impact continues well past the workshop, and well past childhood: six young people are currently being supported through college, and former Thamarai students are returning as assistant facilitators, bringing deep knowledge of the children, the villages, and the challenges they face. As Thamarai puts it: "children become youth, youth become facilitators, and facilitators become leaders for the next generation."

It's a model built for sustained, community-led impact, equipping young people to meet a fast-changing world with real skills — and we're proud to support it. Know someone who cares about education, youth development, or community-led change? Share Thamarai's story with them.
Click to learn more and donate: https://give.aviusa.org/page/Thamarai

09/15/2026

Deepam means "light" or "flame."

For more than three decades, that light has been nurtured through love, dignity, and the joy of seeing children with special needs bloom.

It began in 1992 with a handful of children gathering under the tamarind trees in Kuilapalayam, a village near Auroville, for physiotherapy, play, handicrafts and snacks.

Today, Deepam works with children from more than 20 surrounding villages, providing physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy alongside nutritious food, healthcare, education, play, creativity and vocational training.

Even the meals make a measurable difference: many of the children arrive iron deficient, and with consistent, nutritious food, their iron levels rise and their cognitive function improves.

The impact reaches into families and villages too. Deepam works closely with parents, giving them knowledge and practical tools to support their children's development at home. As families see their children grow, they begin to see more fully what they are capable of.

"Our reward is to see them blooming."
— the team at Deepam

We at AVI USA love seeing Deepam's children bloom, and being able to help nurture this work.

Click to learn more & support Deepam:
https://give.aviusa.org/page/Deepam

Please share this with someone who believes every child deserves the opportunity to bloom.

09/14/2026

Vinayagar Chaturthi, which honors Ganesha — the remover of obstacles and lord of new beginnings — is being celebrated by many of our friends in India. 🙏🏼

This beautiful image came to us from one of our project partner friends in Auroville. What resonates with us is the spirit behind it: an ancient celebration rooted in the land, where natural clay comes from the earth and ultimately returns to the water.

Across cultures, there are traditions that remind us that celebrating spirit and caring for the Earth can be part of the same practice. That resonates deeply with the founding principles that guide the work AVI USA supports — peace and understanding among people, lifelong education, conscious spiritual evolution, and stewardship of the Earth.

May we continue to learn from the many traditions and indigenous practices that connect people with spirit, one another, and the living Earth. 🌿

Please share this beautiful reminder that honoring spirit and honoring the Earth can go hand in hand.

Curious about the project partners AVI USA works with and how their work reflects these founding principles?
Click to learn more our project partners: aviusa.org/partners/

09/10/2026

Picture 41 teachers at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Delhi Branch, writing songs, building puppet shows, and running science experiments — all in one week of Integral Education in action. 🎶🔬

That's what happened this January, when educators from 15 rural schools across seven states in India came together for a week of Project-Based Learning, carrying that inspiration back to their own classrooms.

At AVI USA, we partner with educational projects that nurture curiosity, creativity, and every child's own capacities — directly to teachers. They lived the methods themselves, designing projects that wove math, language, and science together around shared themes.

With funding from AVI USA, each of the 15 schools also received a 34-item teaching kit — abacuses, pulley and lever models, lenses and mirrors, a solar system model, a robotics kit, chemistry supplies, and books — so teachers can bring hands-on learning straight into their own classrooms.

The Delhi Ashram works with 300+ rural schools across India. There's something hopeful about investing in a teacher: what they learn doesn't stop with them. It travels home, and then to every student they teach, year after year. 💛

👉 Click here to read the full story and see the week in action: https://aviusa.org/news/bringing-project-based-learning-to-rural-india/

Please share this story with others who are curious about what it means to nurture the whole child — mind, body, heart and soul.

09/08/2026

"Auroville is a koan." ✨

What does it mean to create a city dedicated to human unity? A place for the evolution of consciousness? For new ways of living together? For ecological renewal, education, spiritual practice?

And what happens when those aspirations meet the realities of human life?

Does the value lie in achieving an ideal? In aspiring toward it? In the questions that arise along the way?

Founded in 1968, Auroville has been grappling with these questions for nearly 60 years.

More than a decade ago, AVI USA President Matthew Andrews brought some version of these questions to Shraddhavan, a longtime Aurovilian and teacher of the works of Sri Aurobindo.

Her answer stayed with him:
"Auroville is a koan."

In our latest issue, Matthew reflects on that conversation and what those words have come to mean to him.

"A koan has no solution. It's not clean or tidy. It's provocative and alive. And so is Auroville."

AVI USA supports projects that resonate with these founding principles — and, like Auroville, we're still growing and learning from the koan ourselves.

Curious? Click to read Matthew's reflection and sign up for our monthly eConnect, where we share stories and reflections from AVI USA and project partners whose work resonates with Auroville's founding principles:
https://aviusa.org/econnect/

Please share with friends who might be curious too. 💭

09/04/2026

We are sharing this personal appeal from Jill Navarre of the Auroville theater group. 🙏🏽💜

.....Jill Dee Navarre wants to raise funds for I Need Your Urgent Support For My Fracture Treatment. Your contribution has the power to help them move closer to their goal amount. Please contribute.

09/03/2026

Rajeshwari grew up in a family where her parents had very little access to formal education. Today, she's pursuing a PhD in mathematics. 🎶 The melodies at Isai Ragam are opening doors for young people to discover gifts in music, dance, academics, and beyond.

That leap happened through Isai Ragam, an AVI USA project partner in Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India, where educators Brigitte Vink and Ivar Jenten have spent years building something far bigger than after-school tutoring. Across seven villages, roughly 120 children ages 6 to 23 come for academics and digital skills — and stay for music lessons on keyboard, violin, and guitar, or dance training in Bharatanatyam and folk styles.

With support from Isai Ragam, Rajeshwari earned her bachelor's and master's degrees and is now pursuing her PhD in mathematics. 🎓

We're singing about Isai Ragam today — about music, dance, learning, and what can happen when young people get the chance to discover and develop their own gifts.

Click to read more about Isai Ragam and the young people at the heart of its work:
https://aviusa.org/isai-ragam/

Please share this with friends who love music and believe in its power to open doors and change lives. Let's help the melody of Isai Ragam travel a little farther. 💛

09/01/2026

At AVI USA, we support experiential and integral education - in the classroom and on the mat. Auroville's Aikido Dojo, known as the Budokan, is one of our newer project partners in Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India.

For nearly 50 years, Aikido has been practiced in Auroville as a discipline connecting physical development with a larger vision of personal and collective transformation. Today, the dojo serves an average of 100 children and adults from Auroville and the surrounding villages.

At 78, Cristo - who has practiced and taught Aikido in Auroville for decades - is now focused on passing what he knows to the next generation.

"The best Aikido is when you don't have to use your skills."

The practice develops the ability to respond rather than react, to meet force without aggression, and to bring greater awareness to the body and mind. Cristo also sees a connection with the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, particularly the role of the body in integral development and the cultivation of consciousness.

Aikido in Auroville has continued through changing teachers and years without a permanent home. Students trained wherever space allowed - moving mats from place to place, practicing without them on the floor of Bharat Nivas, and even training outdoors on sand. The permanent dojo was finally built in 2014.

AVI USA has helped the Budokan provide enough tatami mats for every student to train properly. 🥋

Click here to read the full article about Cristo's work with the Budokan and his integral approach to Aikido:
https://aviusa.org/news/aikido-in-auroville-a-practice-of-discipline-presence-and-transmission/

Please share Cristo's story with friends interested in integral education, learning through the body, and the wisdom that comes from a lifetime of practice.

08/27/2026

🌱 At AuroOrchard, growing food means feeding people and feeding the soil.

AuroOrchard, one of AVI USA’s project partners, is Auroville’s oldest farm, founded in 1968–69 under the guidance of the Mother with the vision of “growing food for Auroville.”

Nearly six decades later, some of its orchards are more than 60 years old, and AuroOrchard saves and uses more than 90% of its own seeds, including seed lines preserved for over 40 years.

Alongside this living inheritance, AuroOrchard is experimenting with syntropic farming and successional agroforestry, growing different plants together in ways that build natural relationships, enrich the soil, increase biodiversity, and create more resilient ecosystems.

It’s an approach rooted in harmony: growing food while strengthening the living systems that make growing food possible.

Now AuroOrchard is building toward another kind of sustainability: becoming fully financially self-sustaining, so the farm can sustain its work, its land, and the people who care for it.

💚 Click to learn more and help AuroOrchard build that future:
https://give.aviusa.org/page/AuroOrchard

Please share this with someone who loves the land, dreams of growing their own food, or believes in finding more harmonious ways to live with the earth. 🌱🙏🏼

08/25/2026

What is inner harmony? 🌸

Success can take you far — but it can't always answer your deepest questions.

That's part of what Dr. Anju Khanna, Director of Madhuban, a Himalayan retreat run by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Delhi Branch, opens up about in the latest episode of the Purnam Podcast: her own story of a life transformed through faith, courage, and an inner search for something more.

She speaks about how we can live with purpose while still fully engaging with the world, and the shift that changed everything for her: from ownership to stewardship.

And perhaps Dr. Khanna's story offers one answer to that opening question: inner harmony begins when the life we live and the life within us are no longer pulling in different directions. 🌸

Produced by our project partner Purnam. 🎙️

Click below to watch the full episode:
https://youtu.be/CCXQ5fPtNrk

Click here to support Purnam and help them keep creating podcasts like this one, along with the study tools and guidance they offer for exploring Sri Aurobindo's teachings:
https://give.aviusa.org/page/PurnamPodcast

What would shifting from ownership to stewardship look like in your own life? We'd love to hear your thoughts.

Please share this with someone who might find something meaningful in this conversation.