The Seva Foundation

Seva is a sanskrit word meaning selfless service. Spiritual teachers like Amma say that in this Kali Yuga (age of Kali) seva is a vital spiritual practice to overcome the egoic minds innate selfish tendencies. These are the principles of the  Seva Foundation, now 30 years old and going stronger than ever.

In 1978, after working with the World Health Organization (WHO) to end smallpox in India, Dr.  Larry Brilliant (currently Executive Director of Google.org), and his wife Girija, a public health specialist, published an article entitled Death of a Killer Disease.  It was their personal story of their years in Asia, first as youthful travelers, then as spiritual seekers, and finally as part of WHO’s successful smallpox eradication team.

They concluded the article with an appeal to readers to find the compassion and understanding to support international health programs to benefit those struggling with poverty.   
       
People who read it were moved, and before long $20,000 of donations arrived in Larry and Girija’s mailbox — with the first $5,000 coming from not-yet-famous, Steve Jobs.

This money inspired and funded a remarkable conference of friends and colleagues to consider what to do next — how could they be of service? The eclectic group included the World Health Organization’s Dr. Nicole Grasset, spiritual teacher Ram Dass, and Berkeley activists Wavy Gravy and Jahanara Romney.

The group created Seva Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing effective partnerships to build solutions to poverty and disease. Inspired by Dr. G. Venkataswami, who was just launching a new, high-volume eye clinic in India that would become the internationally known Aravind Eye Care Systems, Seva set to work making sight-restoring cataract surgery
available to poor patients in developing countries.

Continuing today Seva’s Center for Innovation in Eye Care is leading efforts to scale up equitable and affordable eye care services around the world. In 2008, it launched the So One Million Eyes See Again campaign as a Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Commitment. Seva will help over 100 hospitals scale-up their capacity so that by 2015 one million more eyes receive cataract surgery each year above current levels, a plan that will revolutionize eye care in the developing world.

While continuing their work in Asia, in 1983, Seva began to provide aid to Guatemalan refugees displaced by war. That project has evolved to become the Community Self-Development Program (CSD), which partners with local indigenous groups in Guatemala and Mexico to help them address the basic needs of their communities, including education, health, and civic leadership skills.

CSD works with local partners to create access to culturally appropriate literacy programs and other educational resources; helps train local health workers and midwives; finances the construction of clean water systems; and providorder to advocate for their own communities.

Around the same time back in  the USA Seva Foundation partners with Native Americans working to build healthy communities, sustain their culture, and protect sacred lands and the environment. We began in 1982, when we helped establish the Porcupine Clinic on the Pine Ridge Reservation — the first Native American-operated health clinic in the country.

In 1996, Seva launched the Diabetes Talking Circle, a highly effective training that helps Native people develop self-managed strategies for diabetes prevention and treatment. In 2006, the U.S. Indian Health Services Agency (IHS) adopted the Talking Circles model as a Best Practice, making it available to tribes across the country.

The Diabetes Talking Circle model is now active in over 75 tribal sites and has trained nearly 600 health care professionals
serving Native populations across the United States.

Seva Foundation started as a small group with a big idea, and the idea was this: To be fully human, we must translate our compassion and concern into useful service.

That simple statement conveys something about the nature of compassion that is expressed in most spiritual traditions around the world — that compassion is not just about helping those less fortunate than ourselves, it’s about the realization that we are all connected as one human family.

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