WHAT CAN DAHNAM DO FOR YOU?

To achieve these objectives, DANAM plans to undertake several activities, which include, but are not limited to the ones listed as follows.
(A) For better coordination and communications, we want you to become member of DANAM and/or its local chapter, by sending us the requested information as described later in Membership Registration. DANAM asks for your support, financial and/or in-kind, to implement an agenda that you and your community directly benefit by, and fully understand.
(B) DANAM is here to empower you--individually and collectively. It seeks to achieve this as follows:
For Scholars of Dharma Traditions:
(i) creating, by way of the annual DANAM Symposium, additional sessions at the site of the American Academy of Religion, for:

(a) furthering or engendering research or publishing projects in these traditions.
(b) presenting new or complex research of an individual scholar.
(c) presenting complex or technical panels which often do not make it into the AAR Program
Book!

(ii) building bridges between scholars and practitioners to navigate through the impasse of conflict.

(iii) providing peer-reviewed publishing venues, such as the Journal of Vaishnava Studies and the forthcoming Journal of Dharma Studies.

(iv) initiating discourse between scholarship in different Dharma traditions in order to create suitable arenas for dialogue, and mutual intellectual interaction.
For Practitioners:
(i) Setting up local Chapters, with your assistance, so the community can meet on a regular basis to hold discussions, exchange views, seek answers and identify solutions on Dharma-related issues of individual or collective interest.
(ii) Implementing its “Adult Dharma Education” program in your community whereby you will learn the basic philosophies and theologies of your dharma in a fast and easy manner. This will enable you to respond forcefully and effectively to challenges as well as speaking requests from non-Hindu co-workers and community groups, local media, neighbors, and acquaintances, and genuine inquiries from your children.
(iii) Teaching how to build resources within your community and relationships with your local Institutions of Higher Learning to establish Dharma Studies Programs which you can influence and guide.
(iv) Providing “Certification for the Priests” of your local temple in a basic course on proper representation of Dharma to outsiders seeking information.
(v) Providing Distinguished Dharma Scholars as speakers to present seminars and workshops (and counseling, if needed) in your community to advise on how to accomplish these objectives.
Its purpose is not to impose a universal agenda on individual communities, but to enhance the ability of those communities to pioneer a change in the direction of the teaching, representation and dissemination of constructive Dharma in the West. DANAM invites you to take charge and be at the vanguard in this important venture.

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