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Ahimsa Meals and Fasting Committee: 2021 Program Update By Christopher Jain Miller, PhD
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Christopher Jain Miller completed his Ph.D. in the Study of Religion at the University of California, Davis. He now serves as the Bhagwan Mallinath Assistant Professor of Jainism at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is a chairman of JAINA’s “Thanksgiving Meals and Fasting Committee”. (Christopher.Miller@lmu.edu)
In celebration of the 400th Thanksgiving Day, this past year 2021, JAINA’s Ahimsa Meals and Fasting Committee had proposed a 3-part program: 1) Serve 100,000 animal-free meals to those in need beginning on Ahimsa Weekend, Oct 1-3, 2021, until Thanksgiving Day.
served an astonishing 25,000 meals in Southern California between Ahimsa weekend and Thanksgiving Day and were one of the first to commit toward making this project a reality.
2) Host a global Zoom webinar on Ahimsa Weekend to educate the American public about Thanksgiving history, purpose, animal cruelty, etc. with speeches by speakers from inside and outside of Jain community and encourage people to sign-up to celebrate Thanksgiving Day in a non-violent, compassionate way. 3) Commit 1,000 people to do a full or partial fast on Thanksgiving Day 2021. The purpose was to bring awareness in the global community about animal cruelty and demonstrate that there is an alternate, compassionate way to celebrate Thanksgiving Day. From March until November, I as a committee chair and co-chair Dilip Parekh worked closely with JAINA president Mahesh Wadher and other members of JAINA’s leadership team toward meeting these goals. We are glad to share the results of this program with you in this article. We would like to thank the global Jain community for their unending support and enthusiasm for this initiative, as well as our collaborators at the Global Jain Network and the Jain Vegan Initiative who helped spread the message.
JOSF volunteers preparing the meal
We would also like to thank all the Jain Centers that participated in this project. Among them are the following who served food to those in need:
1. Jain Center of Northern California under the leadership of Biren Shah and Girish Shah served 2,200 meals
1) Serving Meals to the Needy With very enthusiastic support from people like you, we surpassed our goal of serving 100,000 meals to the needy. The final count is 147, 854. There were several major players who helped us make this goal a reality. Special thanks to Joy of Sharing Foundation, Dr. Nitin Shah, Dr. Jasvant Modi, Dr. Narendra Parson, Swatantra Jain, and Varun Gandhi for their hard work and dedication. They alone
JCNC Volunteers packaging food items
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