Seva Spir i t of Service 1 www.seva.org

3 Youth of the Peaks

4 Mobile Eye Camps

6 Dr. Ornish on Gifts of Service

6 Art for Vision’s Sake

7 Celebrating “Dr. V”

A PUBLICATION OF SEVA FOUNDATION®

FALL / WINTER 06

The Center is being developed in partnership with the Collective for Popular Education, a local group with internationally recognized expertise in nurturing community-based organiza-tions. When completed in 2008, the Center will dramatically increase educational and networking opportuni-ties for Indigenous people who are working to improve their communities.

Planning is still underway with a commit-tee of local community members, but it’s expected the new Center will include meeting and workshop space, aresource library, a computer center with Internet access, and a 40-person dormitory with a kitchen and dining room so that people from remote rural

areas will be able to attend conferences and workshops.

underStanding the need For many of us living in the United States, it’s hard to appreciate how important the new Center and the CSD program are to people in Chiapas. When we need something in our community, we know how to take action to get it. We take for granted that we have phones and e-mail to contact our neighbors, and that we can hop on the Internet or go to the library to do research. We have the skills to write letters and petitions, and we can fi nd our way around City Hall with relative ease. With enough effort over time, we expect that we’ll be able to get what we need.

Photographers

Aravind Eye Hospital, Geoff Oliver Bugbee, J. Moses Ceaser, Jon Kaplan, Tony Kozlowski, Brian Harris, Paul Paz y Miño, Save the Peaks Coalition, Rick Smolan, Scott Townsend, Crystal Uchino

Our heartfelt thanks go to all our photographers for generously donating their work. Please visit the photographer’s gallery in the “About Seva” section of our website.

Center for Social Change

To Be Built in Chiapas

CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

Inside

spirit of service

From the Roots Up

The most exciting project in the history of Seva’s Community Development Program (CSD) is now underway! We are building a Community Center for Social Change in the Comitán area of Chiapas, Mexico.

� Seva Spir i t of Service www.seva.org

But in places like Chiapas it’s a different story. “Most of the people we work with are subsistence farmers,” explains Julie Rinard, the CSD Program Manager in Seva’s Berkeley office. “They’ve been excluded and exploited, and in spite of their hard work they are extremely poor. Just coming up with bus fare is a hardship, and they certainly aren’t equipped with phones, e-mail and Internet access. In rural areas, govern-ment services like schools and health clinics aren’t always available, so illiteracy and disease rates are extremely high. On top of all that, after years of suffering repressive violence, most rural people don’t feel confident about speaking their mind and advocating for their own needs. It’s just a totally different reality than in the U.S.”

Those are the conditions being addressed by the CSD program, and the new Center will greatly enhance the work. “There’s nothing else in the region like the Center we’re building,” says Julie. “Having classroom and meeting space and resources like the library and computer room will make a huge difference, and the dormitory makes it feasible for people of different communities to gather and work together. It’s also important just to have a place to call their own — a place to be with like-minded people where you can

feel safe about speaking out and where your opinion is valued. That may be the most important benefit of the Center.”

Julie says one way to envision the potential benefits of the new Center is to look at the Highlander Center in Tennessee. “A lot of people think the U.S. Civil Rights movement in the 50’s and 60’s was a spontaneous occurrence, something that just sort of ‘happened’,” Julie said. “But in fact, there was a highly effective popular education program supporting it at the Highlander Center. They did everything from leadership training for civil rights organizations to the literacy curriculum used in the voting rights campaigns. Highlander was at the core of a lot of change we take for granted today.

I think the Center we’re building has the potential to make that kind of difference for Indigenous people in Guatemala and Mexico.”

Power of PoPular education “People often wonder about the term ‘popular education’,” says Alejandra Alvarez, CSD Program Director at Seva’s office in Chiapas. “It simply means education for the people, and it’s based on a concept that most of us understand — that old saying ‘Give me a fish, I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat forever.’ In popular education, we’re

teaching people the strategies and skills they need to take care of their own communities.”

Alejandra says it’s an organic process that starts with letting people determine their own needs. “We begin by facilitat-ing a discussion about what’s needed in the community. For example, people might say they need a bridge because they have to cross the river on foot through swift water. So we brainstorm together to get their ideas for taking action to get what they need. As we move ahead in the process, we provide training — everything from literacy and computer skills, to critical thinking, to understanding local government. For people who are accustomed to being ignored, this process of having their ideas valued and acted upon is tremendously empowering.”

It’s a process that takes time, but the results are transformative. “One of our great success stories is a group here called ACODEF,” Alejandra says. “They started as rural subsistence farmers with no organizational skills. Now, they’re a real organization with a governing board, and they’re using cell phones and computers. Lately, they’ve been able to get the local government to come through with projects that benefit the community. That’s really what our work is all about.”

let the PeoPle take the lead Sarah Shannon is Executive Director of The Hesperian Foundation, a nonprofit publisher and distributor of books for community-based health care and a

leading resource for popular education projects around the world. “There’s a book about popular education titled From the Roots Up — and that really sums up the work Seva does,” Sarah told us. “After doing this for 24 years, I’ve realized there aren’t any ‘quick fixes.’ To address conditions caused by long-term poverty and marginalization, things only change when people are allowed to plan their own strategies for development and are supported with the resources they need to implement their plans. What we do, and what Seva does, is to meet people where they are and really listen to their needs. Then you find ways to support people’s vision for themselves. That’s how real, lasting change happens.”

From the Roots Up (cont. from page 1)

“For people who are accustomed to being ignored, the

process of having their ideas valued and acted upon is

tremendously empowering.”

Seva Spir i t of Service � www.seva.org

Supporting a New Generation of Native American Leaders Reaching up 12,000 feet in the sky, just north of Flagstaff, Arizona, are three volcanic mountains known as The San Francisco Peaks. For thirteen Native American tribes in the area, it is a sacred, spiritual place — a place for healing and ceremony.

Now, those thirteen tribes are joined by a broad coalition of other groups, including the Sierra Club, in an effort to block a ski resort’s plan to expand its operation on the Peaks and use treated sewage wastewater to make snow.

One of the groups in the coalition is Youth of the Peaks, a grassroots campaign started by Native American youth in the Flagstaff area. Youth of the Peaks is a great example of a small organization making a difference — both in its work to protect the environment and sacred lands, and in the way it builds leadership skills among youth. It’s also a great example of the kinds of projects that Seva Foundation is supporting through its Native American Grants Program.

Save the PeakS! Despite the objections of Native Americans, Arizona Snowbowl has operated a ski resort on the Peaks for many years. In 2004, the U.S. Forest Service approved Snowbowl’s expansion plans, which involve building new ski runs by clear-cutting 74 acres of rare alpine ecosystem and using treated wastewater to make artificial snow — even though many scientists say such wastewater contains harmful contaminants that pose a risk to natural ecosystems and human health.

The Save the Peaks Coalition was quickly formed in response to the expansion plan. It’s a diverse group including business people, religious and spiritual leaders, skiers, snowboarders, conservationists, students and several Native American tribes and organizations. Ultimately, the issue may be resolved in the courts, as six tribes and several environmental groups have filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service seeking to prevent the project from going forward. In September, the case was heard before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, California, and is currently pending a decision.

Although Arizona Snowbowl asserts that the ski area is “only on one percent” of the mountain, Native Americans hold the entire mountain sacred. Caleb Johnson, former Vice Chairman of the Hopi Tribe stated, “You cannot divide spirituality into little pieces — you have to honor and respect the whole thing.” Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. stated that if the expansion is allowed, it will cause “ ...the desecration of the essence of our way of life.”

the Power of Youth activiSm Youth of the Peaks operates with the support of Native Movement Collective. Native Movement provides an administrative umbrella for a variety of projects focused on developing Native culture and protecting the environment — and a small grant from Seva is helping them do their work.

“We are there to support youth activism,” says Klee Benally, the Youth Media Project Coordinator at Native Movement and a volunteer with the Save the Peaks Coalition. “We provide everything from leadership training and media production workshops, to technical services like website management, to mentoring and guidance as the youth plan their activities.”

Youth of the Peaks has been producing educational events at high schools and colleges, and staging rallies and vigils throughout the region to raise awareness about the cultural and environmental issues at stake.

“A lot of the work being done by Youth of the Peaks is through artistic expression,” says Klee. “Last year they sponsored a poetry series where young writers had a chance to work with mentors to refine their poems and practice doing presenta-tions before an audience. That kind of skills transfer is a really important part of what we’re doing.”

Bringing the generationS together “One of the most inspiring things about Youth of the Peaks is the way it brings generations together,” Klee told us. “The youth are gaining a new appreciation and respect for their ancestors and elders who have done so much to keep traditional culture alive. And it’s giving adults a new respect for the value and power of youth voices. To me, that’s the most encouraging thing. There’s a feeling that the circle that had been broken for quite some time is now being mended by the hands of youth.”

To learn more, visit these websites:

The bulldozers came that day wanting, they came to the place where the evening light stayed, where memory, ceremony, imagination, the sacred, and the snow forever remained.

They came that day and I pleaded with their greed… please do not take my home away, my heart lives here — I am a Youth of the Peaks, this is where my ancestors and I pray.

Awake and arise again! shake off the dust from the nightmare, and declare that you are not willing to compromise, declare that you are a Youth of the Peaks!

by Anonymous – a Youth of the Peaks

Youth of the Peaks

www.savethepeaks.org/youth www.savethepeaks.org www.nativemovement.org

� Seva Spir i t of Service www.seva.org

“When she took off the patch she burst into tears

because she could see her grandchildren for the first

time. I’ll never forget that.”

Mobile Eye CampsInnovative Ways to Bring Eye Care Services to the People “I remember it vividly,” says Dr. Ken Baum, an ophthalmologist and glaucoma specialist at Kaiser Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, when asked about his first Seva Mobile Eye Camp.

“It was back in 1997. Steve Miller, another doctor at Kaiser and a long-time Seva board member, told me he was taking a team of volunteer ophthalmologists to far western Tibet — the first time something like that had ever happened. I said, ‘Steve you’ve got to get me in there!’ I’d been studying Tibetan Buddhism, and it helped me make a lot of positive changes in my life — so this seemed like a great way to return the favor.

“Next thing I know, we were in Tibet on our way to a little place in the West. But it was a huge trip! We drove for five days, 10-15 hours a day over the moun-tains. We were only on roads for the first three hours and after that it was all trails, so it was slow going. It was beau-tiful, but we were all a little woozy from the altitude and carsickness. Finally, we came to this little mountain village, and it was the most extraordinary thing to be greeted by dozens of villagers and nomads who had already arrived and were waiting to see us.”

People had come from far and wide to attend this mobile eye camp, responding to an invitation from a team of health care workers who had traveled through the region in advance. Ken and Steve set up their mobile operating room and got to work per-forming cataract surgeries.

“There was one older woman who’d been completely blind from cataract for at least eight years,” Ken recalls. “We did the surgery, and the next day when she took off the patch she burst into tears because she could see her grandchildren for the first time. I’ll never forget that.”

whY not a hoSPital? Kunga Tashi, the Program Manager at Seva’s office in Lhasa, Tibet, explains that there aren’t any eye care facili-ties for people living in Tibet’s remote regions. “The population density in those areas is less than one person per square kilometer,” Kunga said. “Because people are so spread out, it’s not feasible to build hospitals in the rural areas, so they don’t have eye care there. The eye camps are the only way to reach those people who otherwise aren’t being served and would remain blind.”

An advance team of local health work-ers gets the word to the people that the camp is coming. Then a team of doctors and aides arrive, bringing all the supplies they’ll need. Usually, they’ll set up in a community clinic or some other central place — sometimes they’ll use a school building.

“For many people, getting to the eye camp is a real challenge,” Kunga ex-plained. “Some walk for several days to get there, some travel on horseback for as long as a week. It’s a challenge for us to get there, too, because we have to bring everything with us, such as surgi-cal tools and supplies, microscopes,

and generators — because there’s no electricity there.”

Seva’s Sight Program Director, Dr. Chundak Tenzing, points out that while the surgeries happen in unusual settings, the camps always provide a high level of care. “We make sure the quality of care is the same as they would receive in a hospital,” he said. “We don’t compromise with the surgi-cal technique, so we carry a microscope with us. We don’t compromise with sterilization, so we bring what we need for washing properly, we bring gloves and gowns, and we ensure that all instruments that touch the eye are sterile. This is how we minimize the risk of infection.”

the right camP for the JoB Chundak explains that there are differ-ent kinds of eye camps to accommo-date different needs. “In Cambodia, it’s not so much that people live far from hospitals, it’s that there aren’t enough surgeons,” he said. “So the object of the camps is to boost the volume of surgeries. We bring teams of doctors from our partners in Nepal and India, and they work with the Cambodian doctors. This way, we provide cataract surgery to hundreds of blind patients who otherwise wouldn’t be served.”

Another type of camp doesn’t do any surgery — it’s a diagnostic screening camp. “At these camps, we just do eye exams and screen the patients,”

Seva Spir i t of Service � www.seva.org

said Chundak. “Some patients can be treated for minor conditions there at the camp, but patients who need more thorough exams or cataract surgery are referred to a hospital for care. The benefit is that this decreases the load at the hospital, helping them increase efficiency by avoiding overcrowding.”

Screening camps are also conducted in local schools, which is important because children with trachoma and other conditions need early care to avoid permanent blindness. “We train teachers in some of the basics of pri-mary eye care and show them how to do preliminary vision checks,” Chundak said. “The teachers can then determine which children need to be seen for more elaborate testing and any treat-ment that may be needed. This way we reach more children and decrease the

load on the hospitals. We also reach more adults, because the children go home and tell their parents and grand-parents, ‘You need to go to the doctor so they can help you see again!’”

Building local caPacitY Ultimately, solutions to diseases caused by poverty can’t depend on charitable services provided by visiting doctors. The real solution is to support local communities in developing the means to provide care for themselves. “Our goal is to build a sustainable, afford-able eye care infrastructure that’s available to everyone,” Kunga Tashi explains. “We stay very focused on training and supporting local people so that they’re increasingly able to serve their communities on their own. We’re very pleased with the progress we’re making. Now, 100% of Tibet eye camps

are conducted by local teams trained by Seva — and they’re doing about 4,500 cataract surgeries each year. We still provide support, but every camp is led by local people.”

Ken Baum has volunteered for another ten eye camps since his first trip to Tibet, and most of his work involved training local doctors. He says the key is to teach surgical methods that can be effectively applied in local commu-nities. “We teach different techniques than what we use in our hospitals at home because we want them to use the resources they have. And it works well. They develop the skills very quickly and they use those techniques over and over again. At some point, they become better at it than we are! We’ve seen that process happen over and over again.”

oPPortunitY for comPaSSion There’s still a long way to go before everyone has access to the eye care services they need. But Ken says it’s important to appreciate that each of the people that Seva serves enjoys a life-changing benefit — and that each person’s restored vision is a benefit to their family and community as well.

“For me as a surgeon — and as some-one who appreciates how fortunate I am in my life — it’s really amazing to perform a service that benefits other people in such a powerful way,” Ken told us. “Those opportunities seem so rare. Seva donors have this opportunity, too. Maybe they can’t go out in the field with us to do surgeries, but their contributions make it all possible.”

“We adopted Amelie in China in 2005,” says new mom Lien Cibulka of Santa Rosa, California, “and we were just completely overwhelmed with joy. We felt so blessed that we wanted to share our joy somehow.”

Proud papa, Martin Cibulka, says it was then he remembered reading about mobile eye camps in Seva’s Gifts of Service catalog. “I had read that you could fund an entire eye camp and I thought that would be something really nice to do someday. When Amelie came, we started think-ing about it and we realized it was the perfect thing to do.”

Last December, they celebrated baby Amelie by making a gift to support a complete mobile eye camp. As a result, 407 people in Cambodia have had their vision restored! Martin said when they read a report prepared for them about the camp they were moved to tears. “The stories were very touching — people were so grateful to regain their eyesight. Apparently one woman didn’t have any gifts she could offer to thank the doctors who gave her sight back, so she sang them a song.”

The Cibulkas run a fair trade shop called Kindred Handcrafts, and their work gives them a special perspective on Seva. “The eye camp report said that people were asked about their

plans now that their eyesight was re-stored, and many said they wanted to go back to the fields and work,” said Lien. “That’s something we see with our fair trade partners, too. People don’t want handouts, they want to work with dignity. So here are people

who have been blind for years, and they just want to go back to work and support their families. I thought that was very inspiring.”

You can visit the Cibulka’s shop at www.kindredhandcrafts.com.

“When she took off the patch she burst into tears

because she could see her grandchildren for the first

time. I’ll never forget that.”

Sharing Their Joy

� Seva Spir i t of Service www.seva.org

dr. dean ornish on gifts of Service™

Celebrating New Traditions of Giving

When your holiday giving list includes over 400 people and you want to give them something meaningful, what do you do?

OK, not everyone has 400 people on their list, but Dr. Dean Ornish and his wife Anne Pearce do! And for them, the answer is clear — give something from Seva’s Gifts of Service catalog.

“The holidays to me are about spiritual growth and transformation,” Dean told us, speaking about the gifts he and Anne gave last year. “Whether it’s the story of Jesus’ birth, the story of Hanukkah or any of the holidays at that time of year, it’s really about spiritual transformation and service. Somehow that idea has gotten a bit distorted in modern society, and now it’s all about materialism. And while I like receiving a material gift as much as the next person, people who received our holiday gifts from Seva told us they found it extraordinarily meaningful to them that someone’s eyesight was restored in their name. What better way is there to celebrate the holidays then to give eyesight to the blind?”

Dean says another benefit of Gifts of Service is that it makes holiday giving easy and efficient. “Instead of parking and standing in long lines and trying to figure out what gift a person might like and whether they already have it, it’s very simple. I just e-mail a list of names and addresses to Seva and they do all the work to send out those beautiful cards.”

Anne and Dean were married in June, and in lieu of more traditional wedding gifts they created a registry that included Gifts of Service. “That felt good to both of us,” Dean said. “To know that our wedding had a direct and tangible benefit in the lives of so many people because of the gifts given in our honor — that was wonderful!”

For the special celebrations in your life, start a new tradition of giving with Gifts of Service.

Dr. Dean Ornish, MD is the founder and president of the Preventive Medi-cine Research Institute, and serves as Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He serves on the boards of directors of the U.S. United Nations High Commission on Refugees, the Quincy Jones Foundation and the San Francisco Food Bank. Among other honors, Dr. Ornish was chosen by LIFE magazine as “...one of the 50 most influen-tial members of his generation.” For more information, visit www.pmri.org.

Dean and Anne with their son Lucas

art for vision’s SakeYoung Artist’s Show Benefits Seva

“The idea is that when people see the art and think about the information we’re presenting about Seva, they’ll appreciate their own gift of sight in a new way,” says 18-year old artist, Ashley Guevara of North Hollywood, California, talking about her show on display this fall at Yogablend, a yoga studio in Burbank. “I’m hoping it will inspire their compassion for those who can’t see, and then they’ll make a donation to Seva.”

The series of Buddhist and Hindu themed paintings reflect Ashley’s interest in yoga and medita-tion. She heard about Seva Foundation from Thom Savino, her former English teacher at Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley. “I knew about Seva from hearing Ram Dass talk about it, and I’ve donated through Gifts of Service for years,” Thom told us. “I knew that Ashley is very much into Hinduism and the language of Sanskrit, so I mentioned that ‘Seva’ means service and told her about Seva Founda-tion. She connected with it right away.”

Thom introduced Ashley to Christy Marsden, the proprietor of Yogablend. Christy was happy to host the display and collect donations for Seva. “We made some posters that invite people to join us in supporting Seva,” explained Ashley, “and we put out some Gifts of Service catalogs and newsletters. It feels great to have my work be useful to people.”

Thank you, Ashley, Thom and Christy for helping to turn people’s compassion into action!

Ashley Guevara and Thom Savino“Reflection (Om)” by Ashley Guevara

Seva Spir i t of Service 7 www.seva.org

celebrating “dr. v”The Passing of an Eye Care Pioneer

Seva Foundation’s beloved co-founder and longtime board member, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy — fondly referred to by friends and associates as “Dr. V” — passed away on July 7 in Madurai, India, at the age of 87. Guided by the belief that service is a spiritual practice, Dr. V helped set in motion an international crusade against needless blindness.

a lifetime of ServiceDr. V was born in 1918 in a small village in South India. He received his medical degree in 1944, and despite developing severe arthritis that crippled his fi ngers, he returned to medical school and earned a degree in ophthalmology. With hard work and determination, Dr. V trained himself to hold a scalpel and perform cataract surgery. Over time, he personally performed over 100,000 successful eye surgeries.

In 1976, at age 58, he founded the Aravind Eye Hospital, where he led the development of a self-sustaining model of affordable eye care services designed to prevent and cure needless blindness among those struggling in poverty.

In 1978, Dr. V’s work came to the attention of Larry and Girija Brilliant. Larry and Girija had worked with the World Health Organization on a successful campaign to eradicate small pox, and they were looking for a new mission to take on. They convened an eclectic group of friends, including Ram Dass and Wavy Gravy, to con-sider ways to be of service in the area of public health. As Larry tells it, they looked at a variety of worthy ideas, but when they heard Dr. V speak about his vision for alleviating unnecessary blindness by making cataract surgery available to everyone, they were incredibly inspired. So began Seva Foundation, which set out on a mission to support and expand Dr. V’s pioneering approach to affordable health care.

From its beginning in a rented house with 11 hospital beds, Aravind has grown tobecome a network of hospitals with over 1750 beds, serving a population of more than 50 million. Last year, Aravind performed over 190,000 eye surgeries and nearly 1.3 million outpatient services. Seva and Aravind continue to work as partners in developing affordable eye care services around the world.

rememBering a friend and mentorAt a memorial gathering at the Seva offi ce in Berkeley, longtime Seva board mem-bers and volunteers celebrated the life of Dr. V. Here are a couple of excerpts from the expressions shared that evening.

From Dr. Larry Brilliant, Seva co-founder and longtime Board member, now Executive Director of Google.org:

“This is a celebration of a perfect life. It is a celebration of a life that has inspired all of us. Seva wouldn’t exist, Aravind wouldn’t exist, two million blind people would still be blind if it were not for Dr. V...

“His work, his message, his teaching goes far beyond the fi eld of ophthalmology, far beyond the fi eld of health... One day he was invited to Harvard, and I asked ‘What school are you speaking in?’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m speaking at the School of Medicine, and the School of Divinity, and the School of Business.’ And he spoke on the same day at all three of those schools — and I think he gave exactly the same talk....

“He was not an orator, he would just speak very quietly. Half the time he would speak about the divine — and when you asked him, ‘What is your plan?’ he would say, ‘The divine will guide us if we will allow the divine to guide us.’ And the other half of the time he would say, ‘Use as your model for success McDonald’s hamburg-ers!’ Because he believed that God would not allow a world to exist where it was possible for everyone in the world to get a McDonald’s hamburger and not get their sight restored. And he showed us a whole new management principle...

“I don’t know anyone who has met him who has been the same. We’ve all been touched with a little bit of that pixie dust and a little bit of that magic.”

From Jerry Jones, former Chair of Seva’s Board of Directors:

“My fi rst trip to Aravind was a powerful experience in teaching. After taking the tour of Aravind hospital in Madurai, I was amazed at the incredible organization that Dr. V had created — after he had retired! As we sat in his offi ce sipping our coffee, I asked Dr. V, ‘How did you plan this? How did you goal-set this incredible organiza-tion?’ He replied, ‘I didn’t. If you have the right intention, and purify your mind and purify your heart, the right action springs spontaneously.’ This was a new concept for me, but has been an ongoing guiding principle in my desire to do service.

“When I think of Dr. V, it is his radiant smile, his sweet small laugh that come to mind. I feel so blessed to have Dr. V. and the Aravind family in my life.”

“...two million blind people would still be blind

if it were not for Dr. V.”

New catalog on the way!

The new Gifts of Service catalog will be online and in the mail on November 1.

It features beautiful new gift cards by photographers Jon Kaplan and Scott Ridgway.

Find out all about it at www.seva.org.

Or call 1-800-���-7�8�for a free catalog.

chair of the BoardDennis Bowen, Sr.

interim eXec. directorDeborah Moses, MBA

Board of directorSGirija Elaine Brilliant, PhD, MPHPaul GarrettWavy GravyYvette Joseph-Fox, MSWLeland “Lee” LarsonMichael LemleMichel MaurerPeter McGinn, PhDNipun MehtaStephen D. Miller, MDMilan Momirov, BSEE, MSEEDoraiswamy NagarajanSandra Nathan, PhDMarina R. Rifkin, MHSMaura Santangelo, MD, MPHMartin Spencer, MD, FRCSCIsaac Sobol, MD, CCFP, MHScM. Srinivasan, MBBS, DO, MSMariano Yee, MD

honorarY lifetime BoardRam DassNicole Grasset, MD, DTMHGullapalli N. Rao, MD, FACS

adviSorY BoardKenneth J. Baum, MDJohn BennettAlita BowenPeter BuckleyMirabai BushTerrance L. CarlsonGary CohenSally CraneDiane GarrettPaul HaibleRichard Iron CloudMichael Jeffery, JDJerry G. JonesNeal L. Keny-GuyerMary LaMarGlen Dune Lankard, Jr.David LevineMaria Mangini, PhD, FNPSunanda MarkusAlan Morinis, PhDP. Namperumalsamy, MSG. Natchiar, MS, DOPauline Pariser, MDJahanara RomneyBeverly Spring, MDR.D. Thulasiraj, MBAMark TilsenLinda VelardeBob WeirNedd Willard, PhDAgnes Williams

StaffAlejandra AlvarezRoshan BistaPatricia BorregoShravan ChoudharyDolma ChugiLinda CoinerRachel CushingParami DhakwaTashi DhargyeJudy DiGangiSonam Dupdul, MDNelson EscobarArmando FraatzNicole FriedlandSuzanne Gilbert, PhD, MPHRam Prasad Kandel, MPHBal Kumar Khatri, MDCarrie Libeu, MPHPeter LullJosé MalvidoSarah Faye McMullenDeborah Moses, MBAJulie NestingenDharna ObermaierVann RatanaDeidre RedhornJulie Rinard, MAJuan RojoAmy ShertsAaron SimonRuth TamuraKunga TashiChundak Tenzing, MD, MPHRobin Woodland

conSultantSLorelei DeCora, RNTamara Klamner

PhotograPherSAravind Eye HospitalGeoff Oliver BugbeeJ. Moses CeaserJon KaplanTony KozlowskiBrian HarrisPaul Paz y MiñoSave the Peaks CoalitionRick SmolanScott TownsendCrystal Uchino

newSletter volunteerSPam NichollsLarry SimonJulie Wulferdingen

deSign Stoller Design Group

© 2006 Seva Foundation

Gifts of Service™ is a trademark

of Seva Foundation.

Board & Staff

Seva Foundation is a nonsectarian, nonprofi t 501(c)3 charitable organization. All contributions are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law.Spirit of Service is published twice each year. Printed on recycled paper with soy based ink.

Please pass this newsletter along to a friend!

A PUBLICATION OF SEVA FOUNDATION®

spirit of service FALL / WINTER 06

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About Seva Seva (say-va) is a Sanskrit word for service. Seva Foundation was formed in 1978 with a mission to alleviate suffering caused by disease and poverty.

Our approach is to build partnerships that respond to locally defi ned prob-lems and create culturally sustainable solutions. Seva currently works to:

■ Prevent blindness and restore sight in India, Nepal, Tibet, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Egypt and Tanzania.

■ Help indigenous communities in Guatemala and Mexico develop their capacity to meet basic needs and create solutions to poverty and injustice.

■ Support Native American projects across the U.S. in the areas of health and wellness, community develop-ment, environmental protection and cultural preservation.

Seva’s work is made possible by the generosity of donors, foundations, volunteers and friends — all joined together in the spirit of service.