Updates from our Asia Projects 2024
DVA President Bob Isaacson, Operations Director Andrea Diaz, and Sri Lanka Project Director Shanika Gamage, who joined us for part of our trip, embarked on a journey to visit DVA’s Asia-based Project teams in December 2024.
Trip To Thailand
Our first stop was the Thailand Project where we are encouraging the 300,000 monastics to eat plant-based ‘’food as medicine.’’ In addition to watching four presentations and one cooking class in six days, Bob and Andrea met with two of the Wats who signed MOU (memorandum of understanding) agreements to serve vegan food for one day each week. One MOU was signed by head monk (abbott) Phrakru Kosit Suttasorn of Wat Wachirathammawat who has been vegan for nearly 40 years. He is finishing construction on a huge building that will house 3,000 people for retreats! Abbott Suttasorn has much bigger plans than just one vegan day per week.
He wants to make his temple the example for veganism in Thailand, with our help, by eventually serving only vegan meals to the 3,000 yogis who will attend retreats once the building is finished which will be achieved by steadily increasing the days plant-based food is served until it is a fully plant-based temple. We are absolutely thrilled at this opportunity to save animals and encourage animal-free diets for the monks, meditators, and visitors of this temple, starting now! The abbott is committed to helping DVA spread our message to a number of other Thai temples.
Stop In Sri Lanka
DVA’s Sri Lanka Project continued to break records for the number of presentations and people in attendance this year. Our 16 Regional Coordinators discuss the Buddha’s teachings and compassionate eating as well as the health and environmental impacts of eating animals and their byproducts.
DVA continues to expand our mission with the recent hiring of three additional Regional Coordinators. One new hire, Chandana Bandara, transitioned to being vegetarian for two years after working in slaughterhouses as a government health inspector. He has more recently become vegan. He shared that the horrors of witnessing animals slaughtered led him to change his diet to vegetarian and then vegan, and dedicate time towards helping reduce the terrible suffering by encouraging plant-based diets by working with Dharma Voices for Animals. We are very honored to welcome Chandana to our team!
Visit to Vietnam
Since the monastics in Vietnam already adhere to a plant-based diet, the Vietnam Project has been focusing on teaching cooking to some of the tens of millions of lay Buddhists, who are not vegan, both inside Phap Van temple in DVA’s specially dedicated kitchen, at many ot the other 15,000 pagodas (temples), and at various other venues, such as vegan restaurants.
Bob and Andrea spent 3 1/2 days with DVA’s Vietnam Project Director, Venerable Thich Thanh Huan, discussing increasing the number of plant-based cooking classes and an exciting program that will be completed in the next month. They are making good progress on constructing a plant-based restaurant on the street-side of the ancient Phap Van Pagoda, where DVA has sponsored a kitchen for our cooking demonstrations. The restaurant will offer plant-based meals to the community in exchange for dana (donations) in an effort to promote compassionate eating to the followers.