Aug 10, 2024

Honored to have Jyoti nominate Harshida and Dinesh Mehta for India Current's "50 over 50". Below is her write-up.

Thousands of young adult meditators call Harshida and Dinesh Mehta – ServiceSpace Mama and Papa. Many more people from around the world call their home in Santa Clara California, the Kindness Temple. 

For more than twenty-five years, every Wednesday evening, about 40-60, PhDs, professors, authors, doctors, teachers, yoga teachers, entrepreneurs, technologists, engineers, students, activists, gardeners, homemakers, tourists, and people from all walks of life come to sit in silence and meditate together at Awakin Circles, that started at the Kindness Temple. 

Harshida and Dinesh spend the week planning, preparing and cooking a homemade vegetarian meal that they serve to all meditators, to be eaten in silence after the circle. The ripples from this kindness have spread to Awakin Circles being hosted in faraway countries with the ethos of spreading random acts of kindness. 

Silicon Valley innovations change the world in more ways than makes the news headlines. This movement for spreading kindness towards strangers and meditating together in community is the most consistent peace-building work that I am aware of. 

The world needs this more urgently now than ever before. Awakin Circles is the inspiration for many other projects, such as Karunavirus, Dailygood, Kindspring, etc. Harshida and Dinesh are both immigrants from Gujarat. They have held full-time jobs in the Valley and raised two sons. Their sons have been instrumental in using technology to create this global ecosystem of ServiceSpace, which used to be called CharityFocus earlier. 

Yet, the values these technologies enable everywhere are deeply rooted in the home & what Harshida and Dinesh taught their sons. I am glad that IC celebrates 50 over 50 so I get the honor and pleasure to nominate this exceptional couple. Cannot separate them for individual nominations as their love and teamwork is the open secret to what they have accomplished.

[For more, visit Awakin Circle website.]