Happy new year to all. We would like to start 2025 by expressing our sincere thanks to all donors who contributed in 2024. The work of the Ridhwan Foundation simply would not happen without your generosity. We rely on your donations to cover 25 percent of our operating budget to be able to support the infrastructure that makes the teaching available.
As most any other non-profit organization, we depend on donations to help us meet the ambitious goals of the Ridhwan Foundation, goals that not only support our growing community, but also make our teachings available to a larger audience of spiritual voyagers who resonate with our work.
We want you to know that we value your contributions and plan to make excellent, responsible use of them this year. Among the many initiatives they will support:
- Keeping student dues and group tuitions affordable so that no student leaves the work because they feel they cannot afford it
- Critical upgrades to our IT structure, which will provide a more intuitive and user-friendly website and portal experience for our students and teachers, as well as for a new generation of truth seekers who resonate with our teaching
- Development and implementation of strategic goals that will assure the sustainability of the school for years to come and also prepare for a post-founder vision of the school’s future as laid out by Hameed, Karen, and other successors, Bob Ball and Zarina Maiwandi
We feel the future for the school and our community looks bright and optimistic, in large part because of your generosity and your firm belief in the importance of this path in a world that seems topsy-turvy and polarized. The time for what we do has never been more important. We look forward to continuing our journey together.
With deep appreciation,
The Friends of Ridhwan Board: Vaishali Chadha, Laurie Chestnut, John Dunham, Claus Friedrich Haalck, Rob Gussenhoven, Michael Ohr, Seth Schapiro, and Alexander Verdegaal.
Friends of Ridhwan is a non-profit initiated and led by students, designated by the Obsidian Synod to raise funds to support the School and the Ridhwan Foundation.
As we bid farewell to 2024, two of Hameed’s successors—Zarina Maiwandi and Bob Ball—offer reflections on a year full of complexity and uncertainty. Reassuringly, says Bob, we have a community that holds and sustains us through whatever lies ahead:
“The school is people. The school is not a thing that’s separate from the actual living souls that are engaged in collaborating and coordinating together, who are aligned with a shared love of this particular path and of the truth itself.”
No matter what our temporal reality presents, we can take refuge in our teachings and ask ourselves, as Zarina says, “What is the role of spirit in dispiriting times?”
A couple of generous donors in our community have offered to match the first $100,000 in unrestricted donations raised to support the sustainability of the School. But, we only have until the end of December to meet this challenge. Would you help us make the match and double your gift today?
May your end-of-year observances be warm and peaceful.
With gratitude and love,
The Friends of Ridhwan Board: Vaishali Chadha, Laurie Chestnut, Claus Friedrich Haalck, Rob Gussenhoven, Michael Ohr, Seth Schapiro, and Alexander Verdegaal
Friends of Ridhwan is a nonprofit initiated and led by students, designated by the Obsidian Synod to raise funds to support the School and the Ridhwan Foundation.
If ever there was a time for our hearts to remain open, it is now. We are blessed to be engaged in a path that helps us navigate these trying times by encouraging us to look inward and to connect with the larger openheartedness of love, kindness, and truth.
Tuition, fees and dues do not cover all the costs of what we do to support the teaching in the world. Please help us keep the teaching available to all who might resonate with it by making a donation today to the Ridhwan Foundation.
Individual motivations for giving are as unique and personal as the work itself. A few of your fellow students have shared what inspires them to support the School. Their stories are a testament to the power of our community.
The clarity and wisdom we seek are not found in the shifting tides of the outer world, but in the stillness of our own inner knowing. Please consider making a year-end gift and join us in this journey toward a more peaceful and grounded world.