Who we are?

Our mission The Shining Hope Foundation is a UK charity registered at the Charity Commission since July 2010. It was founded by a French family: Serge, Astrid, Marie and Xavier Saint-Arnoult.

It is a grant-making foundation which raises funds online and supports organisations for a period of three years. Its mission is to help local communities live in balance with nature and animals. Since 2012, it has been supporting an organisation called Karuna-Shechen, which is Matthieu Ricard’s foundation, and will extend its support until 2014. It has humanitarian and environmental projects in Bodghaya, Bihar, India. The key projects focus on health, education, and sustainable energy.

Shining Hope previously supported a French NGO called Hutan, from 2010 to 2012. Hutan developed local communities’ independence by creating jobs in the environmental and animal sector in order to ensure a sustainable development in the Kinabatangan region of Malaysian Borneo. The project’s focus was the study of key species such as the orang-utans and Pygmy elephants. We raised 150,000€ during those three years. You may find the results in the progress report in the news section.

Matthieu Ricard

In 2000, Matthieu Ricard has founded Karuna-Shechen, with the ideal of compassion in action. He is a best-selling author, world-acclaimed photographer, scientist, humanitarian and Buddhist monk living in the Himalayas for more than 40 years.

Matthieu Ricard is the son of French philosopher Jean-François Revel and artist Yahne Le Toumelin. Matthieu was born in 1946 in France, and grew up among the personalities and ideas of Paris’ intellectual and artistic circles. At the renowned Institut Pasteur, he graduated of a PhD degree in cell genetics, under the Nobel Laureate Francois Jacob. In 1967, he traveled to India to meet great spiritual masters from Tibet. After completing his doctoral thesis in 1972, he decided to concentrate on Buddhist studies and practice.

The Buddhist monk

He has lived in India, Bhutan, and Nepal and studied with some of the greatest teachers of that tradition, Kyapje Kangyur Rinpoche (1897-1975) and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (1910-1991). He now resides at Shechen Monastery in Nepal.

The photographer

“Matthieu’s camera and his spiritual life are one, and from this spring these images, fleeting yet eternal.” Henri-Cartier Bresson.

Living in close proximity to Tibetan teachers and its culture has enabled him to capture on camera the spiritual masters, landscapes, and people of the Himalayas. He is the author and photographer of Journey to Enlightenment, 108 sourires, Buddhist Himalayas, Monk Dancers of Tibet, Tibet. An Inner Journey, Motionless Journey, and Bhutan. Land of Serenity. His work has been exhibited in New York (RMA Museum, Aperture Gallery), Paris, Perpignan (Visa pour l’image), Winthertur, Stockholm, and Hong Kong. You may all of his publications on his blog.

The author

He is the author of several books including the dialogue with his father, Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher, which was a best seller in Europe and was translated into 21 languages. The Quantum and the Lotus (coauthored with Trinh Xuan Thuan) reflects his long-standing interest in science and Buddhism. In 2003, his book Plaidoyer pour le bonheur (published in English in 2006 as Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill) explores the meaning and fulfillment of happiness and was a major best-seller in France. He has written other books such as The heart of Compassion: The Thirty-seven Verses on the practice of a Bodhissatva, and The Spirit of Tibet.

The scientist

Since 1989, Matthieu has served as the French interpreter for his holiness the Dalai Lama. He is an active member of the Mind and Life Institute, an organization dedicated to collaborative

research between scientists and Buddhist scholars and meditators. He is engaged in the research on the effect of mind training and meditation on the brain at various universities in the USA (Madison, Princeton, and Berkeley), and Europe (Leipzig).

The humanitarian

Matthieu donates all proceeds from his books and much of his time to humanitarian projects (clinics, schools, orphanages, elder care, bridges, vocational training) in Himalayan areas (www.karuna-shechen.org) and to the preservation of the Tibetan cultural heritage (www.shechen.org). He is the founder of Karuna Shechen and Shining Hope foundation supports its projects in India.

Our Values

Our values

Every decision taken by the Shining Hope Foundation is enshrined in our fundamental philosophy that projects we support must take a holistic approach to their local environment’s wildlife, nature and human populations. We are guided by compassion, sustainability and transparency when we make our choices about the projects we fund. We are apolitical and not affiliated with any religious organisations.

Compassion

Our hearts tell us the weakest elements in our global society need protection. In the developed world, we can’t personally aid the most vulnerable people, animals or their environment, but we can express our solidarity with them. We can do this by funding projects that will benefit them and by joining us to change our own behaviour at home.

Sustainability

There’s never a quick solution to a long-term problem, so we only support projects that will last for at least three years with the intention of continuing after our initial support has ceased. We also put in place indices and monitoring systems to ensure that all our goals are being met so that improvements in living standards of local people can be achieved along with the preservation of a viable habitat for endangered species.

Transparency

Donors can be reassured that we respect their rights as stated in the Donor Rights Bill , and their privacy as defined in our Privacy Policy.In addition, we publish regular activity report updates, through our monthly newsletter and publish detailed accounts of how all our funds are spent.The Shining Hope Foundation is also subject to the UK Charity Regulations, which includes special accounting standards under the control of the Charity Commission. Charity Commission UK and its guidelines All our field projects are audited to ensure maximum transparency for our donors. 100%

We were lucky enough to establish ties with a company that decided to help us in an untraditional way. It finances all of the administrative and marketing costs that we bear all year long.

In order to certify the exactness of the amount of this support, Shining Hope submits at the end of each financial year a copy of the company’s books. These books (certified by Deloitte) show the list of expenses made throughout the year that were not allocated to the project. Shining Hope receives then the exact amount that corresponds to all these expenses from this generous company.

We are very lucky to provide the certitude that every donation received is going directly towards humanitarian goals.

Financial Efficiency

The Shining Hope Foundation was created in July 2010.The Foundation strives to operate efficiently and to minimize fundraising and administrative costs. To maximize the impact of each donation, we only raise funds over the Internet. We allocate 100% of our expenditure to carefully-selected projects.

The Shining Hope Foundation also seeks to maintain available cash and reserves to ensure continued funding of our field program even in the event of a downturn in contributions.

Our projects

Helping local communities: Medical Centre and Mobile Clinics, Bodhgaya, India

The Shechen Medical Centre and Mobile Clinic in Bodhgaya, India, brings health care to the people of the Bihar region, a population made up of Hindus, Buddhists, and the Dalit caste – a very poor segment of the Indian population with limited access to medical help. 75% of the patients are women and children.

Shechen Medical Centre is an allopathic clinic and dispensary where patients of all ages and castes come to receive care and medications at no charge. The centre’s programs include general medical consultations, a DOTS Program for tuberculosis treatment, family planning, and safe motherhood. Services include a pathology laboratory and electrocardiograms.The medical centre monthly establishes a medical camp for the Dalit people in the heart of the town of Bodhgaya so that this underserved population can finally have access to basic health care and referral services. Shechen Mobile Clinic is an effective outreach program that regularly visits 12 villages located between 12 and 60 km from the medical centre. It offers free health services to the region’s population of 100,000. Each village is visited twice a month by the medical mobile team (a doctor, a nurse, and a pharmacist).

It provides the poor and infirm with an opportunity to consult a physician, get treatment and advice, and receive medications. Often, even the most basic medical help can save lives, especially those of young children. Mothers and children represent 81% of the patients. In an average month, 3,000 patients benefit from the combined services of the Shechen Medical Centre and Mobile Clinic.

Village coordinators work in the villages to train groups of villagers to integrate safe water use, sanitation, and good hygiene practices in their lives. This training and the follow-up home visits have resulted in a significant decrease in health problems. Patients from 69 satellite villages also attend these programs.A series of deep tube wells were installed in many villages to avert the spread of water-borne diseases. Another goal of the program is to actively working on finding other ways to provide safe water including rain water harvesting. Recently a program to install solar electricity in the villages has been implemented.

Sustainable energy by training illiterate grandmothers as solar engineers in collaboration with the Barefoot College

Shining Hope’s solar program is based on the empowerment of women and rural development.

By collaborating with Bunker Roy and the Barefoot College, this unique approach makes solar electricity available to the poorest populations in rural areas.Illiterate women from rural communities are trained for 6 months at the Barefoot College in Tilonia, India, to become solar engineers. They learn how to make, install, repair and maintain solar panels. They set up maintenance workshops for panels that provide five hours of electricity a day. The villagers control and manage the initiative community and the users have ownership of the equipment.When they are back home, they are able to bring solar electricity to 300 houses in their vil-lage, making it possible for children who work in the fields during the day to study at night, thus substantially improving families’ lives.

Animals: raising awareness, encourage compassion, change habits

Matthieu Ricard has been a vegetarian for decades. He encourages compassion towards our animal friends. He is writing a book at the moment about animal rights. We will send a notice as soon as it is published.

He will cover different issues inducing animal suffering. He will also relate them to environmental or humanitarian problems, showing that we are all interconnected. For example, meat production leads to global warming. The production represents 18% of the global emissions. Producing 1kg of meat creates 50 times more greenhouse gas than producing 1kg of wheat. Pollution is another aspect, farmed animals in the United States produce 130 times more waste than the human population. Secondly, meat production has a negative effect on the poorest populations. Shockingly, 1.4 billion of poor people could be fed by the 775 million tons of grain used yearly for raising lives-tock. Meat production is supposed to double in developing by 2050, with livestock already uses 2/3 of the land surface of the earth, what will the earth look like in 2050? Today, 25 million people could be fed throughout the year if the inhabitants of the USA would avoid eating meat for one day a week. Finally, is it ethical to eat meat when you know that 120 billion land animals and 1.5 trillion sea animals (= 1.5 million millions) are killed for human consumption each year?Like Mahatma Gandhi said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

Want to contribute? Here is our wish list

Wondering how your donation contributes directly on the field? Below are some ideas:

$5Two patients treatment at Mobile Camp and Dalit Camp

$25One TB patient’s food supplement (Mecobalamin, Iron, multivitamin, minerals) for 8 months

$60One month Non formal Education for 30 women

$100Solar electricity brought for one house

$400 One Kitchen garden at school level for 100 kids for balanced nutrition (6-months supply of vegetables for lunch)

$1000One Dalit mobile medical camp, Bodhgaya (400 people)

$1500One hand pump for drinkable water in an Indian village, one-time cost

Contact

Marie Saint-ArnoultFounder

Hill House | 1 Little New Street | EC4A 3TR LondonMobile : +352691221697 | Phone : +442033184558

www.shininghopefoundation.org