Page 8 - Creativity in Buddhist Movement: A case example of Yayasan Belia Buddhist Malaysia 佛教运动的创新——以马来西亚佛教发展基金会为例

It was not a simple case of sitting around a table and began the so
called brainstorming to find the answer. Creativity is a journey -
a journey of contemplation, exploration and experimentation. We

contemplated over the idea of a stereotype Buddhist organisation,
and rejected it. This was because there were already many such
organisations around, and our immediate neighbour, the Samadhi

Vihara, is already operating in the conventional way. We
explored and experimented with having students’ camps,
undergraduates’ camps, meditation camps, and even health

camps. Eventually we discovered the best positioning would be
to become a premier training centre for Buddhists, and the modus

operandi is that any bona fide Buddhist organisations or
individuals could make use of the Bodhi Park as their training
premises. This synergy with third parties works very well. Today

Bodhi Park runs about 25 camps a year! I don’t think there is
another Buddhist organisation in Malaysia that does that.

Gift Project

Peter Drucker said, the foundation of innovative strategy is
planned and systematic culling of the old, the dying, and the

obsolete. The Yayasan introduced the Pumen Children Aids
scheme way back in 1990 to give aids to individual needy
students in primary and secondary schools. This scheme was

very well received at the beginning but as the time passed, the
number of recipients dwindled. So we decided to call off this

approach and replaced it with a new approach and a new brand
name – The Gift Project.

Under the Gift Project, we turned aids to individual students to

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