Buddhism in Society Program-BSP is the newest project of Life and Hope Association which established in 2012 in aims of build closely relation between villagers and Wats( Buddhist Temples) because we have seen that in the past our villagers always care about the monks lives, they support food, desert, health care, education, safe, security, and everything to the monks and monks studied Dhamma( Buddhas' teaching) chanted for blessing them, taught them and told the way for life and also shared to them when they were faced the difficulties in life but later on, especially, after Pol Pot Regime, the monks seem to be ways from helping communities they mostly stayed in Wats and chanted Dhamma in celebration event but not much involves in community development activities. So we made this project to rebuild our good culture between monks and people in community engagement service.
It based on five main activities
1. Higher Scholarships for Young Potential Monks.It is for making comfortable environment our monks to move forward for their further education because most of our monks they are from the poor background and can not well assess for a good education. So we provided them these scholarships to create a good resource for our religion, Wat, and Community.
2.Morality Education. As we all known that morality is very very important in our life and society in building peace, happiness, safety, security, harmony, and prosperity because all these things come from good mind and heart which deeply within our body and our body and mouth totally commanded by mind, so if the mind id bad, the action and speech will be bad and because of bad action and speech it makes this world suffered. So our scholarship monks have their duty and responsibility to doing research and prepare a moral lesson for teaching our people especially our young generation(Children and Adults) in order to let them know the basic concept of morality.
3. Peace House Building. Our monks led by the Team Leaders included the foreign friends from others countries reach out to various communities in Siem Reap Province of Cambodia built the house for poor families or the families that faced with the crisis such as storm, fire burn, and others. We called PEACE HOUSE because we love PEACE and We want to all family member lived in peace and happiness in our houses. So family member has to make sure that they are peaceful person white violence, gambling, alcohol, drug, argument in the family because our house is the house of peace, the house of change, house happiness, the house of prosperity, and the house of harmony.
4.Leadership Training. It is for providing training Course to all Wats Leaders around Siem Reap Province on the subject of Management, Planning, Leadership, Administrative, and others because we have seen that most of our Wat Leaders they are low educated persons, so when they become leaders of Wat they do not know how to lead that why many problems happen in the Wats and monks. So we run this activity to help them to find out the good way to lead our Buddhist Wat to become a very honoring place for all people to find out the peaceful way of life.
5. Emergency Relief Fund. It is the last activity which conducted every month to support the families that face impermanence fact such storm, flood, fire, starvation, poor and others by providing food, clothes, and some first aids support to them in order to help them to solve the emergency problems. It is not much but it is very helpful to the families.
In conclusion, Buddhism in Society Program is to rebuild the great relationship between Buddhist Wats and Community to find out a good way of developing both sites Buddhism and Community to be better and better by sharing with each other.
