AVI awakening

As the creator and director of the Asha Vahishta Initiative (AVI), let me introduce you to this multiphase project to reconceptualize diasporic faith and fellowship in the 21st century. The AVI operates from the Ontario Zoroastrian Community Foundation (OZCF) in Oakville, Ontario, Canada. Our anjuman has a project to create an atash kadeh. A working "Articles of Faith” articulates the vision/character/goals/operation of the AVI, moving forward.
A congregational transformational-education project forms the basis of AVI. It is the Asha Vahishta Seminar Series (AVSS) with its different phases: Phase one has mainly been educative-informative (interrogating identity, faith, fellowship, diaspora, rationale for religious expression). Phase two has been resolution-building (vision, character, mission statement, operating system for 21st century diasporic faith/fellowship). Phase three expectations are to make the AVI actionable.
An AVI-Conference (AVIC) is being organized over two days this year, May 26 and August 18, on "Re-Imagining Faith and Re-Claiming Fellowship in Diaspora: We Ourselves or In Solidarity? AVI.” AVIC will dialog and determine how status-quo bodies perceive the AVI, as an anjuman initiative whose main purpose is to vest authority in the anjuman and substantiate a decentralized diasporic faith/fellowship.
For the sake of efficacy/accessibility, the AVIC is being conducted via e-panel (Skype) although there are in-person invitees. The format is discussion, where short presentations are limited to 10-20 minutes of speaking. The conference chair will direct session discussions around specific topics arising from AVSS sessions. There are also "Insight” sessions so that contemporary Zoroastrian existence/issues may be discussed in interfaith context. The role of education, women, clergy and youth in Daena Mazdayasni as also broadening of interfaith and intercultural boundaries will be among the topics explored at AVIC.
Dr NEVILLE GUSTAD PANTHAKI
Ontario, Canada
npanthaki@sympatico.ca