As of May 2023, The Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute’s (GWEI) Nevada now known as the Ahimsa Peace Institute (API) a 501c3 was founded in Arun Gandhi’s honor in order to carry on his final requests of its founder. We are grateful we are one of his seeds of light asked to carry on, as his legacy of love impacted many people and organizations over the course of his lifetime. Our new emerging Board of Directors is comprised of 4 members and we will grow from here. Our executive officers are locally based in Las Vegas, Nevada. We are in the process of preserving history and developing the Ahimsa Peace Institute website.
Eternal Luminary
Born April 14, 1934 in Durban South Africa, and passed May 2, 2023 in Kolhapur, India. Arun Gandhi spent much of his adult life in India working as a journalist and promoting social and economic changes for the poor and the oppressed classes. Arun and his wife, Sunanda, rescued about 128 orphan children from the streets and placed them in loving homes around the world and began a Center for Social Change, which transformed the lives of millions in villages in the western state of Maharashtra. In 1987 Sunanda and Arun came to the US and in 1991 started the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence at the Christian Brothers University in Memphis Tennessee. In 2007 the Institute was moved to the University of Rochester, New York. In the 17 years of the Institute’s life the Gandhi’s took the message of nonviolence and peace to hundreds of thousands of high school and University youth around the US and much of the Western World. Arun founded Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute in 2008. Publications: The Legacy of Love; Forgotten Woman – the Life of Kastur, wife of Gandhi, Grandfather Gandhi and several others. Arun’s notable interfaith activities include his Washington Post Interfaith Dialogue blog: On Faith; the Board of Interfaith Alliance in Washington DC; leading the Interfaith March 911 for the the past 9 years; and the Gandhi Legacy Tour – 16 years fostering Interfaith with tour participants’ prayer visits and meetings at Muslim Temples, Jain Temples, Hindu Temples – As Gandhi famously proclaimed: “I am a Christian, and a Hindu, and a Muslim and a Jew!”
Ela Gandhi, is a South African peace activist and former politician. She served as a Member of Parliament in South Africa from 1994 to 2004, where she aligned with the African National Congress (ANC) party representing the Phoenix area of Inanda in the KwaZulu-Natal province. Her parliamentary committee assignments included the Welfare, and Public Enterprises committees as well as the ad hoc committee on Surrogate Motherhood. She was an alternate member of the Justice Committee and served on Theme Committee 5 on Judiciary and Legal Systems. She is the granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi.
Younger sister of Arun Gandhi was born on 1 July 1940 in Durban, to Manilal Gandhi and Sushila Mashruwala. Her father was an editor of the Indian Opinion. Ela grew up in an ashram of the Phoenix Settlement. She received her B.A. degree at the former Natal University and later received a B.A. in social science with honors from UNISA. Following graduation, she worked as a social worker with the Verulam Child and Family Welfare Society for 15 years and the Durban Indian Child and Family Welfare Society for five years.
Ela served as an executive member of the Natal Organization of Women from its inception until 1991. Her political affiliations include the Natal Indian Congress, which she served as vice president, the United Democratic Front, Descom Crisis Network, and Inanda Support Committee. During apartheid, Gandhi was banned in 1975 from political activism and subjected to house arrest for a total of nine years. She worked underground for an end to the practice. One of her sons was killed during the struggle against apartheid. She was among the members of the United Democratic Front who met with Nelson Mandela prior to his release from Pollsmoor Prison on February 11, 1990. Prior to the 1994 elections, Gandhi was a member of the Transitional Executive Council.
After serving in parliament, Ela developed a 24-hour program against domestic violence, founded the Gandhi Development Trust, served as a member of the Religious Affairs Committee, and oversees a monthly newspaper. She also chairs the Mahatma Gandhi Salt March Committee and the Mahatma Gandhi Development Trust. Ela Gandhi served as the Chancellor of Durban University of Technology for several years.
Board Members
Lynnea is the Founder and President of Ahimsa Peace Institute. She is an author, and in 1999 she founded Catalyst House. She served on the Board of Directors of Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute (GWEI) beginning in early 2010. GWEI has been in Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council since July 23, 2015. Lynnea is the UN EcoSoc representative for the organization. She represented Arun Gandhi, and her company partnered with Arun in the Gandhi Legacy Tour company. She has four decades of experience in administration, marketing and business development. In the 1990’s she was a nationally recognized spokeswoman for the emerging alternative video and information delivery industries. During that time she founded two small business-based wireless trade associations and has lobbied on Capitol Hill and at the FCC where she has spoken out strongly against the cable TV monopoly, illegal spectrum warehousing and ill-conceived congressional schemes to auction our nation’s precious airwaves to the highest bidder.
Ms. Bylund is a founder and former CEO of a Washington DC telecommunications consulting and management company with holdings in several operating and developmental wireless communications systems and companies. In 1995 Lynnea became the first female in the world to be awarded a Broadband PCS operating permit – she was one of only 18 winners, along with Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon in the biggest cash auction in world history, raising a whopping $7.7 billion. Lynnea also spear-headed the successful effort to launch the first cable TV network in the South Pacific islands. The Universal Peace Federation recognized Ms. Bylund as an Ambassador for Peace on September 21, 2023 The United Nations International Day of Peace.
A well-known India based film producer. He has won numerous awards as a director and producer in international and national film festivals over the course of his career for both films and documentaries. He produced and co-directed the EMMY-nominated feature documentary “The Journalist” and “The Jihadi- The Murder of Daniel Pearl.” His latest feature documentary “AHIMSA- Gandhi: The Power of the Powerless” earned many awards from around the world including the United Nations Celebration of Peace Award. Ramesh served as the Chairman of the Jury of the Non-Feature National Awards and has been on the board of governors of National Institute of Technology Sikkim, and the Central University of Himachal Pradesh is a central research university headquartered from Dharmsala, Himachal Pradesh, India.
After completing her B.A. in Anthropology, Karen Ryce traveled to India, enrolled in the Montessori Training Course, in Hyderabad, A.P. where she was trained and certified in the Montessori Method by Mr. A.M. Joosten, who lived and studied in Dr. Maria Montessori’s household from the age of 14. Mr. Joosten asked her to stay on the year after the Training as an Assistant to the Course. In 1973 she and her husband returned to the United States and founded the Montessori school Children’s House, parent company “Beginnings Incorporated” a nonprofit community service organization. She successfully secured State of California funding for Children’s House which is still in operation. Karen also served on the nonprofit board of Redwood Rural Health Center, headquartered in Redway, CA.
Karen is an author, she wrote what turned into her first book: Friendly Families and the Power of Respect. The first revised version, Parenting for the New Millennium, Create Friendly Families through the Power of Respect, came out in 1996. Besides writing, Ms. Ryce gave workshops, classes, spoke on the radio and wrote for a local magazine and newspaper. She created www.happykidsco.com which includes a member site with all her writings, audios, videos, and trainings. She is now in the process of adding a certification program. One of her recent ventures is working with the Women’s Federation for World Peace. Together they are putting on workshops for the benefit of all interested people, helping create a strong foundation of peace and harmony in the family. Karen is a trainer with the Nevada Registry. Ms. Ryce is also recognized as an Ambassador for Peace by the Universal Peace Federation. GWEI was introduced to Karen through the Universal Peace Federation. Karen resides in Las Vegas and is serving as the institute’s Office of Secretary.
Anuradha Bhosale Chairwoman of AVANI is a highly cherished hero to thousands of impoverished children and their families. Ms. Bhosale is a renowned grassroots women’s rights and anti-child labor activist based in Kolhapur, India where more than 35,000 children are involved in daily labor for local industries. A former child-laborer herself at the age of six, she has spent over 20 years fighting for the prevention of child exploitation, labor, trafficking, and female infanticide. AVANI is where Arun Gandhi peacefully passed on and is his eternal resting place.
As founder of the WCRC (Women and Child Rights Campaign), Anuradha has educated, trained and empowered thousands of widowed, divorced and deprived women in the rural areas of India to stand up and fight for their rights as allowed by the Indian constitution. 52,000 of them now receive some $714,000 in monthly government pension checks which they were previously unaware of being entitled.
