A $4 rice bag for monastics in Bagan!
The following information was sent to us by our team coordinator in Bagan.
I am pleased to report that our local volunteers collected the data from an attendant of a monk who is a member of the Nyaung-U Township Sangha Nayaka Committee (Bagan is comprised of the Nyaung-U Township). He is the abbot of [Redacted] Monastery in Old Bagan and he has actively organized the relief campaigns for the local lay-people recently. Lately in April, he organized all the donors from different parts of the country and carried out a 3-day donation of rice and food to 9,000 families from all villages in Bagan area. We have already planned to conduct this monastic relief campaign under his guidance.
For the recent donations, he and his disciples (including our volunteers) organized them with coupons in front of some famous temples as gathering points to the nearest villages. The local charities also facilitated in all process of these delightful donations. Our local volunteer said that the said that the Sayadaw was thinking to contribute to the monastics as well.
Therefore, it was a good organization of his disciples and the local charities to plan and carry out this monastic relief aid campaign for the monks and nuns in Bagan.
We have planned to carry out the donations in 3 gathering points in Old Bagan, New Bagan and Nyaung-U. We will invite all the monks from the monasteries from a respective area to the respective gathering point. We will donate smaller sacks of 4 Pyis (approximately equivalent to 8.5 kilos) of alms-rice to each monk and nun instead of going to all monasteries and nunneries.
We believe that this can be fairly benefitted to all the monasteries and nunneries based on their population. Instead of contributing bigger sacks (that contain about 51 kilo of rice), it is easier for the monks and nuns to transport back to their abodes. And, this can save the transportation costs where we don’t need to go to monastery by monastery in different parts of the Bagan region.
We are also happy with these numerous small rice allotments, because it provides many foreign meditators around the world the opportunity to give even just a very small donation, and know that it will go towards feeding a single monk or nun. As a single bag of rice weighing 8.5 kilos costs only 7,500 kyat (or around $4), this is truly a moment when we can say that every dollar makes a difference!