Highlights from 2016 in Annual Report

Please check out the 2016 Annual Report to find a full report on our activities over the past year both in the US and in China.

Venerable Yifa's note:

At the close of 2016, we cherish the various important landmark achievements and sustained support of Woodenfish since we launched the first Humanistic Buddhist Monastic Life Program (HBMLP) in the summer of 2002. Each and every year, we commit ourselves to cultivating the next generation of international scholars, and developing compassionate and ethically minded young leaders across every field and industry. With our global network of over 1,000 program alumni; in 2016 alone, we introduced 100 new students from over 25 countries to Woodenfish’s flagship program, the Humanistic Buddhist Monastic Life Program (HBMLP), dozens of Chinese youth to the second annual World CitiZens Camp, hosted the first international Dunhuang Conference on the Transmission of Han Buddhist Texts bringing together a historic world-class group of international scholars, and forged bonds and cultivated new partnerships and relationships with a multitude of individuals and organizations in China and the US.

In 2016 we also gained Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. We have already begun our efforts to ensure that our East-West dialogue is bidirectional and we contribute meaningfully to developing and sustaining peaceful relationships and societies, especially between the United States and China. Woodenfish is so much more than the sum of its parts, and it is joyful to run into alumni on the streets of New York or at a conference in Beijing and take stock of where we have been and look forward to where we may go.

The generosity of individual supporters makes Woodenfish work possible and we are very grateful for your support. We look forward to building upon our work to extend our impact and ensure that we are doing all that we can to create a more compassionate, globally savvy, and enlightened world.

Thank you for your support and hope to see you soon. Omitoufo.

Ven. Yifa