ACI Specific Programs
Casa Jardin Fund
This fund enables ACI Mexico staff and students to serve migrants and indigenous people, often homeless and in need, in the Mexican neighborhood of Guadalajara.
ACI Prisoner Correspondence
Course Fund
Help people in prison find and study teachings that can help them improve their lives.
Casa Jardin Fund
This program is our longest running fund that has the following offerings:
FM4
ACI staff works with FM4, an organization based in Guadalajara, Mexico, through Casa Jardin. Many immigrants are fleeing poor conditions in Central and South America. They travel to Mexico. Some continue to the U.S. FM4 helps migrants with food, shelter, clothing, and immigration services.
STP
Casa Jardin sponsors a Spanish Translation Program that is translating the ACI 18 and some Diamond Way courses as well from English into Spanish. Their work is high quality, and is essential to spread the teachings to the Spanish-speaking people around the world
Scholarship Program
Through its scholarship program, Casa Jardin helps children of Mexican descent in Sedona, AZ, USA, go to college. Typically six scholarships are granted annually to deserving high school students for $1,500 each (total scholarships each year: $9,000). These students, the children of recent immigrants, come from economically-challenged families. The scholarships open doors of possibility to them.
Casa Huichol
Casa Jardin helps the Huichol, an indigenous people of Mexico living in the high mountains of the Sierra Madre. The Huichol are famous for their art, but are very poor. Casa Jardin helps with medical services. The Huichol come down to Guadalajara from their mountain homes to receive healthcare.
ACI Prisoner Correspondence Course Fund
Time in prison can be a kind of living hell for those who are inside. ACI offers prisoners across the US an opportunity to study Buddhism during their incarceration. The 18 ACI Foundation Courses can be taken online. Prisoners can complete their homework, quizzes, and final exams and mail their work to ACI. Senior ACI teachers then review, correct, and grade their work, and return it to the prisoners with comments.
Studying the teachings provides comfort and wisdom to people who are suffering from samsara even more than most. It helps those in prison to change their lives and emerge as better people, more able to live a better life, and contribute to society and the lives of other people in good ways. Also, the connection to their grader gives a much-needed human touch that helps them focus on higher truths while they are in prison.
Your contribution to the ACI Prisoner Correspondence Course Fund helps ACI pay for the cost of grading, mailing, and communicating with prisoners.