Book Title: Mahavir Jain Vidyalay Shatabdi Mahotsav Granth Part 02
Author(s): Kumarpal Desai
Publisher: Mahavir Jain Vidyalay

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Page 353
________________ 330 Dilip Shah made many trips to US and Canada visiting various Jain Temples and explaining tenants and philosophy of Jainism. World Community Service of JAINA has undertaken many humanitarian causes to help victims of natural or manmade disasters in places like Kobe, Rwanda, Haiti, Andaman Islands, Latur, and Kutch. JAINA education committee has created non-sectarian pathshala curriculum in English for children ranging from age 5 to 15 and is used in most Jain centers in the North America. Pathshala teachers in UK, Singapore, Kenya and India order these books that are sold. The education committee has also created a free huge Jain e-library on the web. It has put over 5,500 books, 4,000 articles, 1,000 magazines and 187 manuscripts in English, Gujarati and Hindi that has been visited by individuals from 97 countries and downloaded nearly 175000 files. Similar progress has been made in training young scholars and creating facilities for Jain academic education in colleges and universities of North America. As a result, nearly 20 universities offer regular classes in Jain dharma and about 3,000 students attend these classes regularly. In addition to JAINA and the 67 Jain Centers, many other Jain, organizations service Jains of North America. Young Jains of North America, International Alumni Association of Mahaveer Jain Jain Vidyalaya, JainVishvabharti, KOJAIN, Anekanta Community Center, International School for Jain Studies, a multi-lingual website Jain World, Jain Adhyatmik Association of North America and followers of Rakeshbhai Jhaveri and Dada Bhagwan group. As you can see, Jain community in North America is spiritually well nourished with Temples, Pathshalas and scholarly visits. JAINA participates in the Parliament of World religion meetings every time. JAINA has started to work with various Jain organizations like JITO in India in the area of education for poor children but largely speaking, it has no meaningful interactions with Jain organizations in any other country. U.K. has 30,000 Jains the second largest Jain population outside India. Majority of them in and around Greater London. Some 75 to 80 percent of total Jains here have come from East Africa (Like Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania); some have come here from Aden (Yemen) and the rest have directly come from India. Majority of all Jains here are Shvetambara Jains.There are more than 20 Jain groups in the U.K. The largest of them is Oshwal Association of the UK (OAUK). Other notable groups are: Institute of Jainology, Shree Digambar Jain Association of UK, Jain Network, NavnatVanik Association, Shree Raj Saubhag Ashram -Sayla, Jain Vishwa Bharati, VeerayatanYoung Jains UK and Jain Samaj Europe.

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