The following projects are currently being sponsored by Sacred Works:

The Africa Documentary Project

The Africa project is a documentary film which will interview 3 key leaders in the African Hospice Care movement. The interviews will then be augmented by coverage of several of the various programs that exist throughout the continent of Africa. The intent is for the audience to get a strong view into the incredible work that is being done in end of life care throughout Africa. The three proposed interviews are:

• Faith Mwangi-Powell, Director of the African Palliative Care Alliance (APCA)

• Anne Merriman, Hospice Pioneer and Director of Policy for Hospice Africa

• Bishop Desmond Tutu, World Leader and Strong Advocate for Hospice in Africa

For the past several years the hospice movement has been growing in countries all over the African continent. Despite challenged access to medications, supplies and medical technology, hospice in Africa is succeeding. This is due partially to the ingenuity of those creating the programs, as well as the commitment of the village communities to care for each other. In a very real way African hospice programs are showing us in the West how hospice should be done, mirroring the roots of the movement as community based work.

The Africa Project is working to raise $100,000 USD to complete this documentary film. The hope is to present this film to the international hospice community and to use it as a tool to teach hospice workers around the world what is taking place in Africa and how as a people they are coming together to deal with the AIDS epidemic in an uplifted and humane way.

  Morning Sun Justice Project

Summary: At the request of individual communities facilitators provide education about the current practices within our justice system and the impact that they are having on our communities. Our facilitation approach is based on the confidence in the inherent sanity of all beings. This confidence has the quality of the midmorning sun in brilliance and warmth. Our facilitators honestly explore the pain and brilliance of each group and our social context. Through this process communities identify their own unique wisdoms. Applying these values communities build and rebuild relationships as well as methods of communication based on their own innate warmth, clarity and openness; discovering the sun behind the clouds.

Vision: Creating sane and healing approaches to justice based on individual communities inherent wisdom and values.

History: Karuna Rose Thompson, M.A., founder of Morning Sun Justice was born in 1975 in Boulder, Colorado. She was raised in the same area as a member of the Shambhala Buddhist community founded by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. She is currently an ordained minister through Shambhala International Church. Her education and work has focused on the study and integration of traditional Buddhist practices and theory with forms of social justice and community development. For the past six years she has been a chaplain for the Oregon Department of Corrections. Through her work in prisons and interest in both conventional justice practices and alternative justice practices she has seen the need for a new approach to justice that includes community healing at the core.

Based on her training in restorative justice with Dr. Tom Cavanaugh and his focus on "values based" models mixed with her Buddhist background the Morning Sun Justice vision was born. This approach is based on the assumption of goodness in all people, communities and things. Through identifying what is working in a community and what has carried them the facilitators are then able to walk with the group through the deeper pains and sorrows with the touchstone of their root values carrying the process. Ideally the facilitation model is one of collaboration. While there may be one or two outside facilitators the primary facilitation is done by and through members of the community doing the work. This approach provides education directed towards cutting through the learned helplessness of our society; allowing people to see their own freedom and strength. While it is a "visionary process" the outcome is practical, applicable actions that make sense to the community that has come together because the responses are based on their values, not imposed structures that should be good for them.

Valmont Butte Preservation

The sacred works project has committed to helping the Valmont Butte Heritage Alliance in its efforts to protect the Valmont Butte which is a sacred site for the indigenous peoples of the Boulder, Colorado area. The Alliance has completed negotiations with the city of Boulder and now has the ability to buy the land back from Boulder County. The Alliance is now working to raise monies to buy the Valmont Butte so that it will be protected on an ongoing basis from development and waste disposal.

The Vidyadhara Tales

The Sacred Works Project has committed to support a book project that has been in process for over seven years. Seventy four interviews have been collected with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's close students and the children who grew up in his community and are presently being transcribed by volunteers to put together into a book of empowerments and stories of the Vidyadhara during his seventeen years in the United States.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SACRED WORKS PROJECT CLICK HERE