Jai Shri Mataji
Dear Family,
The initial steps towards our vision for a Sahaja Primary School at Shri Mataji’s Balmoral property commenced in November and December 2020. Below is a brief update for all of your enlightened attention.
Whilst the initial signs are encouraging, it appears that the path forward will require a longer timeframe to completion than originally anticipated. Our revised goal is to open the school for the first term of 2023. This is based on the realities surrounding the lengthy process required to achieve the various land use and development permissions required from the local council.
Project Update:
The parents survey went very well and there was enough interest shown by parents to give us confidence to keep moving forward. We even received interest from some parents overseas to send their children, an idea we are open to.
A meeting was held in December with some senior staff of the Local Council (the Wingecarribee Council) to ensure they were also open to the idea of the school before we went further. We were represented by two Trustees, a National Councillor and a professional town planner we have engaged to advise us. By Mother’s grace, the meeting went well and the council staff were generally positive about the project and advised they would consider it on it’s merits provided we could obtain the necessary approvals in relation to various areas of land use compliance required (especially bush fire management, wastewater management, ecological management).
Work In Progress:
We are now working with a professional planning consultant to obtain quotes to take the property approvals process forward and begin work on submitting a Planning Proposal to the local council.
One of the first and key requirements will be to seek preliminary approval to move forward with the project from the Rural Fire Service. Due to the recent bush fire disasters, they will be looking very closely at our plans and fire safety precautions when considering if they will allow us to proceed or not. If yogis could put their enlightened attention on this aspect and place it into bandhan, that would be greatly appreciated.
We are also working on preparation of the school application to be submitted to the NSW Government. The submission will require us to form the legal entity structures needed to operate the school and we’ll be seeking specialist legal advice in this regard. Any new legal structures formed would be in complete alignment with the trust deed of Life Eternal Trust Australia which was prepared by Shri Mataji.
If the work continues to move forward in a positive direction as hoped, we’ll necessarily begin to incur greater costs for professional fees, legal fees, government charges etc. Accordingly, it is likely we’ll soon need to seek the help and generosity of the collective and begin fundraising to support the project. A fundraising email will be sent to the collective at the appropriate time and the various costs involved will be shared in the email.
In the meantime, if you have any queries or suggestions, please send an email to: [email protected]
(The original news about this school project was sent to the collective in November 2020. Read more.)
With love
Brett – National Coordinator
Video about Australian School Project
Her Holiness Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi with Child