ACI Help Desk Volunteers: Travel the World without Leaving your Desk
Josephine Chan, Hero-in-Chief of the ACI Help Desk
Over the course of two and a half years, Josephine Chan has slowly and surely brought her expertise to bear on making the ACI Help Desk run smoother and faster. "I have a lot of pressure in my "real" job," says Josephine, affectionately known as Jo. "I run a 24x7 call center in Taiwan where I live. I have to check my emails constantly. So I thought, for the ACI Help Desk, why not just inform Help Desk volunteers when there are messages just for them? That way, when emails in different languages (ACI is now supporting 12 languages) come in, the system informs the appropriate team member and they can respond quickly. They don't need to stay on their phones all the time checking."
Originally from Hong Kong, Jo now lives in Taiwan. She's studying ACI courses, is the mother of one, soon to be two, children, is a wife, and an entrepreneur. She's running a company that does medical assistance, and it's very meaningful work to her.
Jo was introduced to Asian Classics Institute through yoga. "When I first moved to Taiwan, I had nothing to do, so I was looking for yoga classes online. I found a yoga workshop in Taipei. Part of the yoga class involved a reading club--after the yoga, we would have a book discussion. And the book we were discussing was The Karma of Love in Chinese!
"I thought this was a little odd, and I was intrigued. Why would we read such a book as a part of yoga? What was going on? At first I had doubts. In our Chinese tradition, we don't ask for things as part of our spiritual practice. I didn't believe in it at all, at that time."
Jo pursued the yoga and the reading club. "After three or four classes, I thought, well, if I'm going to spend time on this book, I need to have a reason to do so. I don't want to spend time on something I don't believe and that doesn't work. So I did some little experiments. The results were, it works!"
Jo smiles. "Later, I applied these techniques to my life more. I had very good returns!"
She comments, "That's how I got in touch with Geshe Michael. My yoga teacher was also a translator for ACI. She knew my background, she knew that I can function pretty well in English, as I studied it overseas for many years. She asked me to join the translator group. I would translate Geshe Michael live online from English to Chinese."
Through this group, Jo saw a request for volunteer help from Tatiana Kondruchina, who managed ACI's translators at the time, currently manages teacher trainings and the remote off-site event project, and is a main project manager for ACI events as well. Jo jumped in, and the rest is history.
Altogether, Jo has been volunteering for ACI for six years now. Jo was one of the first people involved in the creation of the ACI Help Desk, now an important staple in how ACI serves its students, more than two years ago. Other Help Desk volunteers frequently comment, "Jo holds it all together! We couldn't do it without her!"
For her part, Jo appreciates many aspects of the Help Desk work. "The team members in this group know how to treat people. It's very different from when you are working in a "real" office environment. It feels so good, when a question comes up, to resolve it very quickly. I know that when people ask the Help Desk a question, they really need a quick response. It's urgent. A lot of people say to me, 'Oh, I must have bad karma, I can't log in to the event!' It feels so good to me to resolve these issues immediately. 'No, you don't have bad karma,' I tell them, 'it’s just a little thing.' And I can fix it. And I do. And they feel comfort immediately."
Jo says that being an ACI volunteer has brought many benefits to her life. Very practically, it has improved her patience skills, her English skills, and her ability to use the ACI Online Learning Platform. And she has noticed that she's getting a lot of help in her life. "My problems seem to get solved very easily," she tells us. "For instance, the other day, I needed to go out food shopping for my family. My mother-in-law called just at that moment and said, 'I just cooked--come over and get some!' This kind of thing is always happening to me."
The proofs of How Karma Works keep coming to Jo. "I needed to buy some masks, I was trying to find a store to get them, and my husband just came up to me and gave me some. It's so magical. When you need help, or you need something, it just comes!"
Jo feels happy when she gets thank-you's from people she helps online. "I get thanks all the time from the participants. It feels so good. It's like double rewards--thank-you's, plus help with life events."
For people who are thinking of becoming an ACI volunteer but are not yet sure, Jo says, "Just do it! Everyone has the ability to help. Everyone has a strength in some way. You don't have to hesitate. Just try it. If you have questions when you start, there are so many people you can ask for help. It's easy. Everyone will give you a hand whenever it's needed."
Jo is excited by the evolution that has occurred at ACI from the first moments of the Help Desk until now. "At first there were only about three people on the staff and a few volunteers. Now there are many more. We worked so hard! How the courses are organized is improving every time. The culture is so good now. And the studies are incredible!"
The ACI Help Desk started in April of 2021, and that it works so smoothly and perfectly is due in large part to Jo, and to her cohort of multi-language volunteer colleagues. ACI extends its thanks to Jo and to all the volunteers like Jo who were with us from the very beginning. ACI acknowledges, humbly and with gratitude, that we wouldn't be able to do anything without our army of volunteers!
On a more important note, Jo and her husband will find out in the very near future if their baby is a boy or a girl. "If it's another girl, I won't have to buy anything," Jo tells us. "But if it's a boy, I've got a lot of shopping to do!" Jo promises to let her ACI family know the news as soon as it's available.
Svetlana Claire Dunaeva, one of ACI's Help Desk Heroes
Svetlana Claire Dunaeva came to the ACI Help Desk to assist a friend, who was also her karmic partner: "My friend Galina was going away, and she asked me to take over her Help Desk job while she was gone. I was already in the ACI volunteer corps, but there was something about the Help Desk that appealed to me. I never stopped volunteering on it!" Svetlana sometimes goes by the name Claire. "Svetlana means light in Russian, and my mother said she named me that so I would have a lot of light in my life. And Claire means clear in French, so it's a close translation. Also, it's easier for people in other countries to say Claire."
She started studying the ACI 18 Foundation Courses during the pandemic, and finds it slightly challenging but very rewarding. "At first, I didn't understand anything! But now I am fortunate to have the teachers I need so I can get the meaning. I really enjoyed completing the exam for ACI 1. I think my volunteer work for ACI helped me plant the seeds to find the teachers I needed to teach me in ways that I could understand."
Svetlana Claire explains a bit about her work on the ACI Help Desk. "Our job is to support and respond to all the inquiries that come to ACI, especially during events and programs. We use Telegram and email to help people around the world get their needs met. We answer a lot of questions. We have different volunteers that handle different language groups. My particular groups are Russian and Ukrainian-speakers. But I often handle English queries too."
Another big part of Svetlana Claire's volunteer contribution to ACI is her role as a key assistant to ACI's Ale Jasso, who manages the ACI teaching program and is a project manager for many major ACI events. "I consider this my main job," says Svetlana Claire. "It's a very busy one. ACI has a lot of things going on!"
People from all countries ask Svetlana Claire and her Help Desk colleagues many different kinds of questions. "They may want access to an event, help finding out how to pay, or be worried they're missing something. Maybe they need a passcode for Zoom. Or they might have a question, like, when will the special Tibetan names be sent? or when will the recordings be available? We try to help them with everything."
Svetlana Claire says she has counterparts for each language that ACI supports. "There are one or several volunteers available to help each language group." ACI is now transmitting the dharma in 12 languages, so that's a lot of volunteers on deck for each event!
Svetlana Claire immediately began to feel the significance of what she was doing when she began volunteering. At first she felt she was not important enough to do this work. "I thought, oh, this isn't for me! It's just for important people!" she tells us. She quickly discovered that help was badly needed, and that she was doing a good job at filling a much-needed role. She found that doing ACI courses and programs and listening to the Peachtree World News helped ground her in her work.
"My volunteer work for ACI has changed the shape of my heart!" says Svetlana Claire. "And it has changed the world around me. I am getting more and more happy. I am becoming a much more cheerful person and trying not to get upset in situations which seemed desperate in the past. I've seen changes in my life. My relationship with my parents is better. At work, I have a new approach to tasks. My work colleagues are friendly; we even go out to lunch from time to time. It's now a friendly and supportive community."
Svetlana Claire says she used to have a very specific view of the world. Her work with ACI has helped her see it's not that way at all. Things that might have seemed impossible, she finds, are very possible after all. "Once, I was working during an event, and someone in Germany needed a Zoom access code to get in. I didn't know who had the code. I'm in Moscow, but I had to talk to people in the U.S., Asia, and Mexico to try to find this code in a very short time frame. Previously, I would have said this was impossible. But it happened! We found the code, and I gave it to the person in Germany, who was then able to access the event. It's so mind-expanding!"
Svetlana Claire considered herself not a talkative person, very closed-off, for most of her life. But watching the questions and answers during Lam Rim 44, Developing a Good Heart, opened her eyes and inspired her further. "People need to know, don't they? They ask all sorts of things. I want to put all my heart and love to support the people connecting to the teachings in such a deep, intimate way. I want to help them plant the seeds to have the teachings in their own lives."
People in her everyday surroundings, like the concierge in her building, have started to act differently, Svetlana Claire notices. People who used to be grumpy now smile all the time. Or in the shopping centers, when she is paying for her purchases, the cashiers have begun sharing recipes with her or showing pictures of their pets. "People are so friendly, smiling, and open-hearted now," Svetlana Claire notes. "I have always liked to read about travel. But I don't need to go anywhere now. My world is transforming all by itself!"
Svetlana Claire is grateful for what she considers a precious opportunity to volunteer for ACI. And ACI returns that gratitude a thousandfold!
Asian Classics Institute Help Desk Hero Monica Torres
Service has always been intrinsic to Monica Torres. Before Covid, she was volunteering, doing eldercare in a nursing home. It involved karaoke! She wanted to do more. It needed to be something that fit in with her work schedule, preferably something online. In retreat, she learned how important it was to start serving your teacher.
She was in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2016, doing her master's degree, taking a lot of yoga classes, when she saw a poster of Geshe Michael Roach, who was going to give a public talk. She wondered, "Who is this guy?" Something was telling her to go to the talk, that her life was changing. She took her parents, too! She heard all about the pen in the talk. She began studying ACI courses in Mexico while she was getting a master's degree in public policy from the University of Chicago, which is the field in which she currently works.
How does she help the Asian Classics Institute? "It's evolved through the years," says Monica. "My main job is to make Tatiana's, Ale's, and Nikita's lives easier (members of the ACI staff)! And all the lives of the people studying with ACI, too--their issues and questions, help with the platform. My job helps address queries, comments, issues, and needs, in English and Spanish. I help with access to the programs, and take comments and questions at info@asianclassicsinsitute.org. At first, I was bothering staff a lot! Later I got better at answering questions."
Monica says things work seamlessly on the volunteer Help Desk because of Josephine Chan. "She is our leader. She makes the volunteer job so much easier. It's so effective because of her. It's magical that she took the job."
During ACI events, the Help Desk gets very busy. A lot of questions come up about how to use the platform. People want to know, will the class be recorded, how can I access course recordings, how to register for retreat.
How does it feel to be part of the team? Does it give anything back? "I love it! Josephine makes it so easy. She'll say, Make sure you do x! What we do helps make the student's spiritual journey with ACI as easy and seamless as possible. It's also a lot of fun."
Monica finds her volunteer work for ACI fits in and is very well-adapted to her work schedule and personal life. She's done it for a couple of years now and still finds it gratifying. She can go at her own pace and rhythm, and it makes volunteering easy for her.
"This is my contribution to my teachers," says Monica. "To feel I have a volunteer path, that I'm giving back to the world. It's a privileged position, and I provide my skills to give back." Volunteering fulfills a life goal Monica has, to be part of something bigger. "This job connects you with international society and communities," she says. She habitually works with people from Europe, Australia, and South Africa, as well as Mexico and the US. She feels connected with them all.
Does Monica rejoice? "A month before the recent retreat in Guadalajara, a good friend dared me to start doing tartuk (which means rejoice in Tibetan)," she tells us. "It transformed my health! I started to protect life and rejoice it, and my energy improved, my concentration, my focus."
Monica has some advice for people who might be contemplating volunteering for ACI. "Look for an opportunity that fits your lifestyle. This is important just so that you can actually be consistent, do what you say you'll do. That is very important for a volunteer."
"Geshe Michael says, start with carrots!" Monica recalls. "This comes from Master Shantideva. Start with something that seems small (even though it's not actually small). This will make it easier to give back!"
