For the month of June, the public classes at the Birmingham Buddhist Centre have been focusing on the themes from BAM. Last night 16th June, Maitrisara presented a slide show on the Centre’s Carers Project, now in its 11th year. Through this project, unpaid carers of family members learn methods to take care better care of their physical and emotional health. Over the life of the project so far, day workshops and overnight breaks have been available to 600 carers at no cost to them.
In the last year, there have been some interesting developments in the project. The Birmingham Buddhist Centre is now part of a city wide consortium of 21 charities including MIND, MENCAP and Age Concern as well as smaller community groups with particular specialisms in carers from Asian, Chinese and African communities. With one common database and an integrated communication system, we hope that the synergy arising between the organisations helps us all to serve the 100,000 carers in Birmingham more coherently.
More details are here:
http://www.birminghamcarershub.org.uk
and here:
www.livingwellworkingwell.org.uk
The Buddhist Centre is innovating in a number of ways by running mental wellbeing courses with MIND for carers and offering one to one guidance as well. In March 2016, we will be holding a three day carers festival which will take place within the context of a longer retreat for the festival team.
