By the cdm office
For 10 days devotees from different parts of the world attended the pilot course on “Vaisnava Life Counseling: A practical framework to support individuals and communities in ISKCON”.
An assorted group of devotees, interested in developing further their counseling skills and gaining a deeper understanding on how to help devotees, gathered in Sridhama Mayapur for a “hands-on” training in counseling.
For over a year the CDM, in partnership with the Mayapur Institute (Atul Krsna Prabhu), has been working in the development of this course seeing the need for providing informed support to devotees experiencing difficulties of different kind.
Iksvaku das, an Australian Social Worker and Counseling trainer -who facilitated the course- commented, “I am impressed by the great response we got from different temples and leaders about this course. This shows that this kind of training was long overdue in ISKCON. We hope Srila Prabhupada is pleased with this endeavour to attend to the devotees’ well-being.”
The congregational ministry aims at establishing this course as a regular feature for those interested in supporting congregations and individual devotees in ISKCON. By providing formal training in the area of counseling, devotees will be better equipped with practical tools and skills to assist those in need -an essential aspect of devotional line-.
“Those who are devoted to the cause of the Personality of Godhead live only for the welfare, development and happiness of others. They do not live for any selfish interest…” (SB 1.4.12)