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GLOBAL JAIN NEWS
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NORTH AMERICA
JAINA CONVENTION -
Philadelphia, July 2-5 1999
The tenth biennial JAINA Convention is expecting some seven to ten thousand Jains from all over North America. The event will be held at the massive Valley Forge Convention Centre near Philadelphia. Planned for the Independence Day Holiday weekend of July 2
5, this event has been attracting Jains from all over North America for the past twenty years, and is becoming ever more popular. The Convener of the Convention is Dr. Devendra T Peer who is President of the Samarpan Jain Sangh. He is assisted by Dr. Dhiraj Shah, President of the Federation of Jain Associations in North America.
The planned events include lectures on different aspects of Jainism, workshops, exhibitions, and cultural programmes every evening. It is an event targeted for a family audience, and people come to meet fellow Jains and family members who live in different parts of North America. This event is perhaps the largest gathering of Jains outside India. The official launch of Jain Spirit will be done at this convention. The event also attracts delegates from all over the world, notable among which is a youth delegation from the Young Jains of the United Kingdom, which has been a regular attendee for the last ten years.
AFRICA KENYA
Jain Spirit July-September 1999
Jain Education International
PROF. HARISH JAIN ON HUMAN RIGHTS REVIEW COMMITTEE.
For Private & Personal Use Only
A four-member panel headed by former Supreme Court of Canada justice Gerard LeForest has been named to conduct a sweeping review of Canada's human rights law and the watchdog body that enforces it.
OYLMPICS
For over forty years, the Oshwal Association of East Africa, a Jain community organisation, has been co-ordinating a Sports Festival organised by the Oshwal Youth League (OYL). Called the OYLmpics,
this event has been attracting a growing representation from the United Kingdom, and this year, over 100 delegates attended this event. Held during the Easter Holidays, youths compete in a whole range of sports from table-tennis and badminton to swimming, squash, bridge, and even volleyball. This year, all the games will be hosted by the Nairobi branch of this community. Competitions are
banded in age groups, with children as young as eight years also competing. Sports is a very important way of attracting young people to the community and bringing them together. This event has been instrumental in uniting the East African Oshwal Jain community for many decades.
The LeForest panel has one year to report back to Justice Minister Anne McLellan with recommendation on whether to broaden the 22-year-old law to prohibit discrimination on other grounds such as "social condition" or in other words, low-income status.
The other Members of the review panel include Professor Harish Jain, who teaches at McMaster University's Faculty of Business specializing in systemic discrimination issues. He served as a panel member of the Human Rights Tribunal from 1986 to 1992 and has done extensive work in the fields of employment equity and affirmative action. Prof. Jain is a senior member of Toronto's Jain community and President of the International Mahavir Jain Mission (Canada).
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