In 2021 Dada Dhyaneshananda formed a core team to join him on the Friendly Cooperation project including Ole Brekke (Denmark); Craig Runde (USA); and Margaret Rathwell (Italy).  Regular international online meetings started in August 2021. In the first meeting Dada Abhay Brc., Didi Ananda Arundhati, Dr. Ashwini Sandu and Dr. Suman Bhowmik all from India, Francisco Flores (Mexico) and Maria Fagerlund (Denmark) also participated. Later the core team expanded to include Sid Jordan (USA), Manuel Mauri (Italy), Eugenio Mendoza (Venezuela), Dada Diipainjanananda (India), and Dada Prabuddhananda (Germany).

Madhab Chandra Basak, Tanmay Deo and Sumona Sharma from India, Anthony Lovage (UK), Arthur Pacheco (Brazil), Ann Gibb (USA), Anna Bend (Italy) and Istadeva (Angola) have also participated in meetings and contributed. Invited specialists have included neurological researcher Dr. Sucharit Katyal (University of Denmark, Department of Psychology) and Prof. Bishal Sitaula (Norwegian University of Life Sciences, professor in the Department of International Environment and Development Studies) and Dr. Anand Kumar (Department of Physics, Technical University of Denmark). In this way the project has been dynamic and expanding, focusing on the study of Shrii Shrii Ananadamurti’s writings and discussion of key topics relevant to Friendly Cooperation and practice or action research through team members’ experience and projects in their different environments – arts, service, business, education, the Ananda Marga organization etc.

We are grateful to Dada Acyutananda in Kolkata and Dada Vanivratananda in Italy who have helped us with Publications questions, Sohail Inayatullah (Australia) for valuable feedback on the first draft of the book, Brian Ragbourn (Ireland) for corrections, Prof. Nabin Jana (India) and Pooja Kumari (Denmark) for computer advice and Tarcisio Bonotto (Italy) for layout.

Acarya Dhyaneshananda Avadhuta became an Ananda Marga monk in 1968. He was a senior worker in India for many years in Prout coming to the Global Headquaters of Prout in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1982 and where he is presently based.  He was Sectorial Secretary of New York Sector, Nairobi Sector and Berlin Sector. He first went to the USA in the year in 1984 and gave lectures and conferences in different parts of the USA including New York University, Philadelphia University, Cornel University, Minnesota University, Los Angeles University, and Stanford University. He was invited many times to different programs for Asian Americans in the USA to give lectures about Prout and traveled to Thailand, the Philippines and Japan to give lectures on Prout Philosophy. He addressed the “World Indian Origin” summit held in the Hilton Hotel, New York in 1986. 

In 1988, he went to Lome, Togo in West Africa as an Ambassador of Ananda Marga to Togo. His duty was to explain the idea of PROUT to the Government of Togo. He lived in Togo and Ghana for nine years and traveled to other countries in West Africa like Nigeria, Benin and Ivory Coast many times to give lectures on Prout. 

He has been Marga Guru Representative at spiritual programmes in Bangladesh twice. His experiences are told as stories in the book “Stories of Baba”, published in 1993. In recent years he has been working on the Friendly Cooperation project and now on a new project on the spiritual treasure of Shrii Shrii Anandamurti. dhyaneshananda.dada89@gmail.com

Ole Brekke is a mime artist and clown and the founder/director of The Commedia School in Copenhagen, Denmark together with Carlo Clementi Mazzone, and has been a margii since the 1970s. He has worked for over forty years in Theatre as a teacher, director and performer with a focus on performance relevant to the lives of individuals and society. He has been an instructor and leader of many workshops on Neohumanist education and the arts. He recently created a show now touring in Turkey about the conservation group, Kuzy Doga, in remote Eastern Turkey where they created an 82 km long wildlife corridor for threatened large carnivorous animals. commediaschool@gmail.com

Craig Runde has been a member of Ananda Marga since 1971. He received a BA in comparative religion from Harvard University in 1973 and a law degree from Duke University in 1978. He was a trainer, author, and speaker in the field of conflict management and resolution until his retirement in 2021. He is co-author of the ‘Conflict Competent’ series of books from Wiley and the ‘Improving Your Conflict Competence’ course from LinkedIn Learning. His main project in Prout has been drafting a world constitution and he published a book, “A Proposal for a World Constitution Based on the Works of Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar” in 2022. craigrunde@gmail.com

Margaret Rathwell has a B. Sc. in Geography from Durham University and a Ph. D. in Computer Science from Bradford University. She started Ananda Marga meditation over forty years ago and worked in and helped to run Neohumanist kindergartens in England, Iceland and Italy. After training as a Montessori teacher she worked as a Distance Learning Tutor for the Montessori Centre International in London from 1986 till 2014 for teachers throughout the world. From 2004 she worked as an English conversation teacher in Italian State high schools until retiring in 2022.  margaret.rathwell@gmail.com

Sid Jordan is a clinical psychologist, and taught in the Department of Psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina for 25 years. He served for five years as director of the Mental Health, Alcohol and Drug Services at the Franklin C. Fetter Neighborhood Health Care Center in Charleston. In 1994 he moved to Asheville North Carolina to develop an eco-village and in 1997 trained to be an Ananda Marga Family Acarya (Yoga Teacher). He is presidents of the Ananda Marga Gurukula Inc. Board in the US and of the Board of the Prama Institute and is working with the Board of the Neohumanist College of Asheville in creating a 33 acre campus to offer online and mentoring training for Neohumanist Educators globally. He is currently producing a film on Neohumanism and examples of Neohumanist projects in different parts of the world. sid.jordan1@gmail.com

Manuel Mauri is a psychologist-psychotherapist specialized in Clinical Hypnosis. He is  director of the Centro Ipnosi Strategica, where he performs psychological Counseling and strategic hypnotic psychotherapy. He specialized at the Milton H. Erickson Foundation in Arizona, Practitioner and is a Master Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming.  He is co-creator of “The Love Really Method” and helps people learn tools and strategies to live better in relationships. He teaches yoga and meditation and runs the musical group “Ananda kiirtan band” and a Youtube channel for helping people increase their self-esteem. He is author of the ebook Amore, Come Posso Parlarti?, together with Mauro Barachetti  (BrunoEditore). manuelmauri@gmail.com

Eugenio Mendoza is a Mexican activist for the Prout movement in Venezuela. He has been working in Venezuela since 2011 at the Prout Research Center of Venezuela (PRIVEN) in Caracas. He translated Dada Maheshvarananda’s books “After Capitalism” and “Tools to Change the World” into Spanish. He also studied Johan Galtung’s Master Class which has influenced his work in promoting a culture of Positive Peace. Currently, he collaborates with PRIVEN and grassroots organizations, researching the application of Prout principles in local and regional contexts. iusage@yahoo.com