Activity

Aurovilians Ivar Jenten and Brigitte Vink, both originally from the Netherlands, have been working with village children for many years. In June 2021 they founded Isai Ragam under Auroville’s Auromitra Trust.

Daniel Helman Lee grew up in Auroville, graduated from Future School in 2019 and studied in Maastricht, The Netherlands, before moving to Israel, where she is now enrolled in a Master of Fine Arts creative writing programme in Tel Aviv.

Lakshay Dharan shifted to Auroville in 2015 and became an Auroville resident in Feb 2018. Since then, he has been active in art, communication, strategy, and organisational work.

Nishtha (Siegfried) Mueller is a long-term Aurovilian, Sanskrit teacher, Veda researcher, and passionate life-long learner. For more than forty years he has devoted himself to Sri Aurobindo’s The Secret of the Veda and Hymns to the Mystic Fire, to the study and restoration of some of the ancient hymns and to sharing a living approach to Sanskrit with spiritual seekers.

The Auroville women’s ultimate frisbee team, better known as Rhino Ultimate, has been around for almost a decade, and is the oldest women’s ultimate frisbee team in India.

From clunky prototypes to a thriving EV ecosystem, Auroville’s journey mirrors India’s evolving electric vehicle landscape – driven by innovation, resilience, and a vision for sustainable transport.

The German Government set up the Weltwärts programme to allow young Germans to volunteer in a different country for 6-18 months in areas like education, health, environment, culture and human rights, in order to broaden their minds and strengthen international understanding.

In a recent issue of News & Notes, a twelve-week course on kolams was announced. It would help people, it said, to “find their compass, reorientate and be able to prioritise direction, regulate boundaries and thresholds within themselves and the surrounding world”.

The following are excerpts from volunteers' final reports after 12 months in Auroville A transformative year that still resonates Much time has passed since my Weltwärts year in 2008-09.

Chali reflects on the fractures within Auroville and on the possibilities of restoration.

On 13 August, the managers of Annapurna Farm received an email signed by three working groups constituted by the Governing Board – the Funds and Assets Management Committee, L’Avenir d’Auroville (Auroville’s Town Development Council) and the Farm Service – stating: “It has been decided to allocate 100 acres of Auroville land at Annapurna for the IIT [Indian Institute of Technology, eds.]

On 14 August Dr. Karan Singh, who has been Chairman of the Governing Board of the Auroville Foundation for more than 20 years, briefly visited Auroville.

In October 2024 we interviewed Dan Capdeville who launched the “Seeking Our Inner Being” project in January of that year. Now, one and a half years later, he has decided to formally close it down.

In 2018, Amrit published ‘Children of Change’, a memoir recounting his early life and the difficult years in Auroville when he and others chose not to take sides in the bitter conflict between the Sri Aurobindo Society (SAS) and the then-dominant Auroville collective.

Heartweaving is quietly bringing together Aurovilians with different perspectives to manifest possible ways forward through sustained inner work.

How an Israeli top lawyer joins Auroville to become a sound healer.

Maatram is a mental-health support centre in Auroville staffed by professionally trained psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, and counsellors who work collaboratively to offer compassionate, person-centred care.

Bob Zwicker has worked in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives for 52 years, with particular responsibility for the Mother’s works. Recently, three new books have been published containing new material not published in the Centenary edition of The Mother’s Collected Works.

Once upon a time a very long time ago, deep in the woods at the bottom of a mountain — Mother’s Mountain, mata-giri—a six-page newsletter called Collaboration came into being.

On 17 April, long-term Aurovilian Frederick Schulze Buxloh was informed that his application for visa extension had been denied. The decision sparked widespread concern, leading to a petition addressed to Indian authorities that garnered over 4000 signatures.

Manya Sekar, who came to Auroville in her teens, will soon start pursuing her higher education at Oberlin College in the USA. Here she talks about her experience in Auroville.

For almost two decades, Rosa lived in Auroville, immersed in the transformative work of Awareness Through the Body (ATB). Now she is bringing ATB workshops and advanced training to South America and plans to work with educators and trauma therapists in underserved areas, providing training that facilitates trauma release and inner balance.

It all started in September 1998. Jean-François and I were at home when a group of teenagers, familiar faces from the Auroville schools, walked in with a quiet determination.

The January 2025 issue of Auroville Today focused on the aftermath of Cyclone Fengal, which breached the Lego block dam separating sections 1 and 2 of the Matrimandir Lake.

In the recent ruling of the Supreme Court of India, the learned judge, regarding the need for Auroville’s development vis-à-vis environmental protection, stated that “…while the right to a clean environment is a guaranteed fundamental right under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India, the right to development through industrialization equally claims priority under fundamental rights particularly under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India.

A year ago, architect David Nightingale talked about how Spiral Dynamics could provide one way of understanding the present situation in Auroville.

In May 2024, the Governing Board of the Auroville Foundation approved the creation of the Auroville Physical Education Board (APEB), and allocated an in-principle budget of ₹2 crores (approx.

Auroville Today: What was your childhood like, how did your own musical journey begin? Shalini: My journey with music began very young. Singing was always central to my life, but never through formal education.

On Saturday, 1 March, the community was invited to come to Cinema Paradiso to hear community members telling short stories; transformative memories of the past or hopeful dreams about the future of Auroville.

It Matters is a space for artists and the community to connect, collaborate, and create. Rooted in Auroville’s spirit of exchange, it fosters dialogue and new ideas beyond the local art scene.

Friederike Mühlhans has a long experience of working for Auroville International (AVI). Since 1997 she has been a board member of AVI Germany and since 2003 she has been Secretary of the AVI Board, with a four-year break when she served as Chairperson.

The Auroville Visitors Centre is Auroville’s reception and information disseminating centre for the often thousands of tourists and visitors coming to Auroville daily.

If the self-help genre had a naughty cousin who snuck a whoopee cushion under the seat of life’s seriousness, The Joy of Living Lightly by Fif Fernandes would be it.

“In this as in all great human aspirations and endeavours, an a priori declaration of impossibility is a sign of ignorance and weakness. For by the doing the difficulty will be solved.”

Aurodeva is an artist and art therapist born and raised in Auroville whose work displays a rich blend of creativity, introspection, and connection to his roots.

Born in Paris, Nathalie grew up surrounded by the evocative scents of her grandfather’s painting studio. At the age of seven, her life took a profound turn when her family moved to India, eventually settling in Auroville.

In early December, six graduate students and their professor from the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Queen’s University, Canada, visited Auroville to explore the social impact of Auroville on the nearby village of Kuilaypalayam.

Serena, an Aurovilian and filmmaker, recounts her journey with the nuns of the Buddhist Karsha Monastery in Ladakh, documenting their inspiring story and the powerful exchange that unfolded.