Distribution to Hospitals

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Hare Krishna dear Prabhus. Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada!

I am sorry for not responding earlier. Here we had ecstatic Ratha Yatra festival and we were all mobilized for the last several days.

Since many devotees showed interest in distributing books to hospitals Vijay Prabhu suggested that I write about it on BDS instead of replying privately.

First thing I must say that I am not sure if this will work in other countries, but it definitely works in US.

In US every hospital has a Volunteer Service Department. They deal with volunteers and donations. They are very, very eager to accept donations of books. Yes, donations. They are not buying books, you have to donate them.

So there are three steps:

Step 1) Collect money or find someone to sponsor free book distribution.

Here we are running a program called Sastra Dana. We have our newsletter that's coming out twice a month. (Those of you who would like to receive it in email please write to me.) The newsletter is mailed to 150 devotees on our mailing list and they annually donate between $20,000 and $25,000. That's lots of books. And we are continually increasing year after year. I also have some electronic documents about how to start and expand the Sastra Dana program. At your request I'll email you those documents.

Step 2) Call a hospital and offer a donation of books.

Find on Internet all the local hospitals and their tel. numbers. Ask them to transfer your call to the Volunteer service department/office. I usually tell them that I am with a yoga society. You can't present yourself or our books as religious because hospitals don't accept religious books. Our books pass as yoga, meditation, Eastern philosophy… Many times they don't even look at the books you donate. They are simply happy to have some books donated. On a few occasions they asked to look at the books and they loved them. One woman told me, "You have great books!" Usually they ask for more books.

Once they agree to accept the donation you can ask them what they are going to do with the books. They usually put them in their library, they put them in all the rooms, next to the patients' beds. In some hospitals volunteers take them out daily on a cart and offer them, together with other books they may have, to their patients for reading. They also put them on the tables in the many waiting rooms. Isn't this wonderful? I think it is just great.

Make sure they don't sell them. Sometimes they sell them in their shop and use the money for their mundane purposes like helping poor (eat meat) and stuff.

Books don't last too long in hospitals because people steal them, take them home and READ them. I think it is wonderful that people are so eager to read Srila Prabhupada's books that they steal them.

Step 3) Deliver the books.

I usually wear karmi close. As I said hospitals don't accept religious materials, so you don't want to look religious. This rule they have is kind of good because keeps Christians away. If they would ask me if I am a Hare Krishna I would say YES and would explain that the books I am donating are not religious, if the explanation would be neccesary.

So that's it. It is pretty simple. Last month we placed so many books in hospitals that we ran out of money. Now we owe $1,700.00 to BBT. They don't mind because money keeps coming in. That's what is nice about Sastra Dana.

Please send your comments and questions here to BDS conference and we'll help you get started.

Jay Sankirtan!

Your Servant,

Mahat-tattva Dasa

Author: admin

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