February 2010
A Update from the Executive Director:
2009 was a year of continuing evolution for the SPC. We have entered a period of encouraging local prison volunteer efforts to go on their own steam, and realigning the SPC’s role within the prison Dharma movement. The SPC is evolving into a more purely educational organization. Over the last five years we have conducted 30 initial trainings for volunteers, in 23 cities.
In 2009 we saw four local prison efforts fly on their own wings. In November, the SPC closed its Milwaukee branch. A local group of volunteers now manages visits into two units in the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility. Our efforts could not have succeeded without the cooperative efforts of Tonen O'Connor, the doyen of the Soto Zen sects in Milwaukee, who has volunteers working in ten or more Wisconsin prisons.
Earlier in the year we withdrew from the Oregon Department of Corrections, in response to local initiative to take over the work at the Oregon State Penitentiary, where the SPC sheparded 19 or so meditation weekends over a three-year period.
In early 2009, our two-year training for ten employees of the Polish prison system, again established with the help a Soto Zen lineage in Warsaw, came to conclusion.
Our work with Dharma teachers in Holland coincided with a ground-breaking movement within the Dutch government, to employ four Buddhists half-time, with offices in Dutch prisons, to provide Buddhist instruction and services to Dutch prisoners.
In 2008 and throughout 2009, the SPC reinitiated work in seven Arizona prisons. We are continuing to work with a Muslim community-based organization in one of the most conflict-ridden neighborhoods in Chicago, training youth leaders in meditation. We are also continuing to work with the Boulder County, Colorado, criminal justice system in different capacities, and in Colorado prisons.
In the works is a plan to propagate the teachings of the great meditation master and scholar, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and his predecessors in the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages of Tibet, in the criminal justice environments. Stay tuned for developments in this arena.
As always, we could use donation. A little bit goes a long way with the SPC, as virtually every penny we raise goes to fund the expenses of volunteers; we maintain no central office function to speak of. We need only about $15,000 a year; we could do a great deal with that amount in 2010.
With earnest aspirations for the establishment of a just and sane world, starting at the bottom,
Bill Karelis
Executive Director
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