GaurangaFest
A Performing Arts Edutainment Program in Public Schools and Forums
Dallas-Ft. Worth Area
We were all swept up by the spiritual enthusiasm of pleasing Srila Prabhupada, the powerful example of our guru-maharaj and the combined effort of more than 120 sankirtana devotees! The entire Sankirtan Party simply emulated a mood of Relentless Compassion, Radical Inclusion, and Extravagant Grace! Of course, the prasadam was out of this world as well!
The entire atmosphere literally had you begging to go out on book distribution! There were three parties, one that went to the airport, this was the main team of senior devotees that produced outstanding results, the second to downtown Chicago, which also produced record book scores, primarily with medium sized books, and the third was made up of new devotees that would perform harinam at the major university campuses distributing the weekly "Harmonist" A newspaper the devotees printed which gave a Krishna conscious perspective on world events and the news!
It was this simple and sublime effort that rooted us all as book distributors!
Expanding the effort, H.H. Ganapati Maharaj revitalized a team of Radha-Damodara TSKP devotees and included me to travel across the U.S.A.! Within a year, by the mercy of my guru-maharaj, I found myself traveling around the world with him, where he introduced me to leading sankirtan devotees who took me out with them in Australia and India!
His training and strong desire to spread Krishna consciousness had me performing book distribution in Hong Kong, Fiji, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and China, where I lived and distributed books for six years! A team effort that resulted in 20 titles of Srila Prabhupada's books being published into Chinese and millions distributed!
Returning to the U.S.A. with my wife, Kunkumangi in 1993 after a year of book distribution in Taiwan together, our guru-maharaj asked us to teach in the gurukula and on the weekends perform Sankirtan!
As we worked with the devotee children, we were inspired to organize a Krishna Conscious Sunday School! And as our guru-maharaj furthered his university studies he told us that he found our natural role as devotees was to work within the education system. Thereby, carrying Srila Prabhupada's teachings into mainstream society!
Forming a team of friends, devotees that we had organized and performed together for Sunday feasts and festivals, we founded "Gaurangafest.org!" A performing arts edutainment program developed specifically to introduce the culture, lifestyle, and worldview of a Gaudiya Vaisnava to students!
Our presentation includes, Odissi and Bharat-Natyam Indian dance performances, interactive Kirtan, a puppet show, interactive yoga for kids, storytelling, and interactive Indian arts & crafts! We also place a set of books into each school library as a reference and invite the children and their families to our temple and restaurant, Sri Sri Radha-Kalachandji Dhama, for dinner and after-school yoga, cooking, and dance classes!
On the weekends, we seasonally perform for outdoor festivals and put up large professional book displays in front of the major Indian grocery stores of Dallas!
We would love to expand our effort with the help of all of the wonderful devotees of Benediction Moon, to be able to give a book and color tri-fold about our classes and restaurant to each and every child and family we meet! Most schools average in the area of One Thousand Students! And just in Dallas, there are over One Thousand Schools! The outreach is practically unlimited!
Please visit us online at www.GaurangaFest.org! We are a 501c3 non-profit agency!