By: HG Guna Avatar Das
We are located at Chub Te Traw Commune, Angkor Thom District, Siem Reap. Here we have three projects- 1) Yashodapura Eco Village, 2) Vedic Cultural Educational Center and 3) Chub Village Basecamp. The projects are under the guidance of HH Bhakti Raghava Swami Maharaja and other two prominent well-wishers HG Kala Dasa Prabhu ACBSP and HG Kisora Krishna prabhu. Kala prabhu has a strong commitment to help Cambodia. Prabhuji has been helping from last ten years. A team of five translators, arranged by Kala prabhu has completed translating one of Srila Prabhupada’s book “The Science of Self Realization” into Khmer and it is almost ready for printing. While Kisora Krishna prabhu from Indonesia has been involved in our projects right from the beginning.
We have HG Kumudaksa prabhu, in charge of the center in Siem Reap town and several preaching programs such as Sunday Feast, Food for Life and Online Bhagavad Gita discourses. We also have HG Vishnurata prabhu, based in Mayapur (India). He is one of the authorized Bhakti Sastri teachers from ISKCON Ministry of Education and also the Secretary at Daiva Varnasrama Ministry office. He has been appointed as the Director of our Vedic Cultural Educational Center, and for the time being the position will be taken by Kisora Krishna Prabhu.
The third Project is Chub village basecamp. One of the first local devotees in Siem Reap, Khear prabhu has been helping us to start the English school in Chub village basecamp, along with another teacher named Bhontorn. The latter stays for a few days every week at the Basecamp. We together try to serve Lord Jaganath in the village. This project is supported by Shukada devi dasi from California, but originally a Khmer. In order to help Cambodian children she raises some fund to establish school and build the the temple which has a circumference of 46 meters. It is planned to have four rooms, including one for the deities and the other a Kirtan hall. The construction is now 70% complete.
In the year 2020 we had several activities undertaken at the Vedic Culture Education Center. After the first kutir in west zone, construction of kutir in the north west got completed. Now we continue to build the second kutir in the south east. For the second kutir, we have used more traditional material like wood, bamboo, thatch roof and mud . The is also almost 70 percent complete. The last step is to build the kutir wall using mud mixed with hay.
After this, we will continue with the construction of the shrine. Kala das prabhu is willing to help us raise some fund to help us with kutir construction.
Several months ago, the government has started to build many new roads here, and some of those roads are passing from very close to our project land. This has helped us provide a new short cut road from Vedic Cultural Educational Center to the Chub village basecamp. Now there is a mere distance of just 1 kilometer between the two. The Government has also built a new short cut road to our farm Yashodapura Eco Village. This has improved the farm project’s accessibility.
At Yashodapura Eco Village, a new male calf was born to Mother cow, Devaki recently. He is our first male calf, taking the total count to five with four cows and a bull. In this season, the cows are grazing in the rice field and in the evening we give them the elephant grass.
In 2020, five local families harvested the rice and offered 15% of paddy yield to the project, coming to about 500 kilograms.
In the dry land, we have started to clear the forest to establish the 12 Vrindavan forest (mahavanas). This will help the environment as well, making its small contribution to clip the global climate change. We are thus trying to make some small improvement in helping the fast deteriorating situation of our planet and save the biological diversity.
The 12 Vrindavan forests will have respective sign boards with good facility for composting.
By the blessings of all devotees, Guru and Krishna we are moving to year 2021. Many more service opportunities are waiting for us in ISKCON Cambodia, not only in the village project but also of city preaching, book distribution, prasadam distribution etc. We humbly seek everybody’s mercy so that we can have more local devotees interested in Sanatana Dharma or Bhakti Yoga or in Krishna Consciousness.