By the www.BhaktiWomen.org Team
Among the various areas that
the Bhakti Women team serves women in, we are also very inspired to support
mothers in empowering their daughters and to honor and value their role as
women. We wish for them to excel and shine in their roles as home- makers
, caretakers of the physical, emotional and spiritual well-being of their
families, in raising emotionally and spiritually sound children and in
maintaining relationships within society. With this purpose in mind we offered
a ten session Girls Home Science Camp in Seattle during June-July 2015. The
camp was well appreciated by all girls and parents from the devotee and secular
community.
The team has created many
teaching aids, resources and activity sheets for this camp and we are very
happy to share this with everyone. We hope that new and experienced home
makers alike find this material useful. We also hope that mothers find this to
be a useful tool in training their daughters. We also foresee other
congregations utilizing this material for camps as they find
appropriate. We would also be very happy to receive feedback for mistakes
and improvements in our materials. Find below a list of topics covered
along with links to materials and pictures. We hope you find these
useful.
Feminine
Qualities and the Home
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Within this module we covered
the importance of how feminine qualities are extremely powerful and how they
impact the well being and happiness of all family members We discussed
how a woman’s performance of her duties with due support from her family members
gives a strong foundation for the performance of grhastha ashrama dharma. We
did two activities to deliver this message. One was a discussion of feminine
qualities of women personalities from scripture, along with a group discussion
analysis on how things would have been different if Sita would not have
followed Rama, if Ahalya was not tolerant and Draupadi was not forgiving
towards Ashwatthama and Sukanya got irritable while dealing with Cyavana Muni.
The girls presented skits and their group wise analysis on each of these
topics. We also did a Duty Web Activity to show how the non performance of even
one of her duties can lead to a collapse of the entire social fabric and family
fabric.For Resources: Click
Here
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We covered the topics of
Cleanliness, Organization and Home Decor. We based this module on the
instructions of Narada Muni for women from the verses SB 7.11.26-27 ,
“…….she should sweep and clean the household with water and other
liquids so that the entire house is always pure and clean. She should collect
the household paraphernalia and keep the house always aromatic with incense and
flowers…..” . Within the topic of “Cleanliness”
we helped them identify the different varieties of surfaces that need to be
cleaned in the house and how each one of them require a specific cleaning
mechanism. We also introduced them to the concept of natural bio- degradable
cleaners and helped them make one such cleaner during activity
time. Within “Organization” (collect the household
paraphernalia) we helped them understand the importance of organization based
on Srila Prabhupada’s teachings. We had group activity planned related to
organizing certain areas of the home- kitchen spice rack, kitchen vessels,
clothes closet, study desk and jewelry.
Within Home Decor we
discussed how Krishna Conscious homes must be a sactuary for the spiritual,
emotional and physical rejuvenation of the family members. We discussed how
housekeeping and decor play a major role in the well being of the family. We
discussed how the purpose of beauty – is for Krishna , to remind us of Krishna.
Since Home Decor is an extremely broad topic we covered the aspect of patterns
in design and how all traditional cultures use patterns from nature and why
they do so? We connected that with how all those patterns in nature have been
created by Krishna and to surround yourself with such patterns in the home –
either on flooring, upholstery, carving and prints the purpose is to always
remember Krishna through those.
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Within this module we covered
to major two topics. The first being “ Food, Mood, Karma and You”
on how the type of food we eat and the consciousness of the cook affects our
consciousness, karma and mood and ability to grow in life. We discussed the
importance of choosing the right types of foods and being extremely careful of
eating only prasadam cooked by devotees. We also discussed about the effect of
eating local foods easy to obtain and the effect of natural farming using cow
dung vs. fertilizers. For that we had a field trip to HG Harivilas Prabhu’s
farm where we showed them organic farming using cow dung and also the care of
cows.We also touched upon the topic of food storage and different methods of
preservation with one being pickling where the girls learned how to make a lime
pickle( Link to pictures for this activity:. The second topic we covered was
related to “Prasadam Serving”. We gave them some pointers
on what constitutes a good menu vs. a bad menu. We also discussed serving
sequences and serving layout (arranging a table – Indian style and Western
Style).
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This being an important
function of the grhastha asrama we tried to introduce the concept to the girls
through this module. We covered how one needs to be mindful of the spiritual,
emotional and physical needs of the guests and how one can take care of them.
We have also designed mother daughter activities that they could do at home
around arranging a sleeping area for the guests and also learning how to serve
prasadam to them – in terms of menu planning, serving layout and serving
sequence. We also had a group activity around different guest arrival scenarios
and how best the group could tackle those scenarios based on what they had
learned.
Mother Daughter Activities
Since our vision is to support
mothers in raising their daughters. We planned various Mother- Daughter At Home
Activities for every week of the camp to enable the mothers to train their
daughters at home and make the best use of the summer. The idea behind this was
that nothing can replace what a daughter can learn from her mother and our
effort is to help mothers in imparting this science to their daughters.
Handouts for those have been linked above with the various course modules.
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Links to pictures:
Click here for pictures from the Home Organization activity:
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pictures on Lime Pickle activity
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Cake Decoration activity and videos:
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pictures from Marigold planting
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pictures from Cow Care
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pictures from Planting Box Preparation Activity
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Videos:
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