5
president’s message JAINA President’s Message Jai Jinendra! I hope you and your family observed Paryushan and Das Lakshan Parva with a lot of devotion even though the events were virtual due to COVID-19. JAINA had set up daily virtual lectures in Hindi, Gujrati, and English. Samvantsari Pratikramans for all the sects and Anumodana Bhakti was also setup virtually for the community to take laabh. JAINA is grateful for all the positive feedback received. Hope everyone is doing well during these unprecedented times of our life. It is so hard to truly understand the level of devastation and sufferings happening due to this deadly coronavirus pandemic and seeing growing predicament globally that is characterized by hunger, homelessness and destitution. Now more than ever we all need to come together to join hands and help each other. In this issue of Jain Digest, we bring you various perspectives about the COVID-19 pandemic. The responses to JAINA survey about how the Jain community has dealt with the challenges and other interesting articles on the pandemic from the Jain perspective are presented in this issue. We hope that you will find it interesting to learn about what actions our community members are taking for their mental and physical well-being, how they are supporting each other in difficult times, and even thriving by learning new things. Here are some of the JAINA activities and achievements in the past four months.
June 2020 COVID-19 JAINA Surveys JAINA conducted a brief survey to find out the incidences of COVID-19 in Jains. This survey helped us understand if the vegetarians are affected less than the people who are non-vegetarians. JAINA also did another survey “COVID-19 Jain Mental Health”, to analyze the mental health of the Jain community in North America. JAINA BOD Meeting 2020 JAINA had its first Board of Directors meeting of the year 2020 virtually. During the meeting, JAINA added two new Committees effective September 2020. Vegetarian Symbol Committee: Mr. Yogesh Bapna of CA was appointed to explore the possibility of having federal regulation of word 'vegetarian' or 'vegan' and equivalent symbols on packaged foods in the United States. The Endowment & Planned Giving Committee: Mr. Siddarth Jain of NY was named as chairperson of The Endowment & Planned Giving Committee. This committee aims to provide legal and financial guidelines for planned giving activities. The committee will offer tax-advantaged opportunities to the American Jain community to help fund specific JAINA committees to expand their activities.
