About Us
Established in April 2009, we started out as a day center for people with Autism in an apartment in a serene location in Besant Nagar, Chennai with 4 children. The founding member Nandini initiated this venture out of a desire to create a happy space for the children. The curriculum Heartism was born out of the day schedule that is wholesome in educating the body, mind, soul and spirit.
We moved in October 2013 to an independent bunglow in Kottivakkam, a quite suburb near the sea shore on ECR, Chennai. Heartism our curriculum has expanded since then and has been re-written multiple times since its inception. It is bound to expand further to accommodate the desires of the children, teachers and families of the children being served through The Lotus Foundation. The children themselves contribute greatly to the day schedule. There is no pressure of them or the teachers to perform for anybody else. All each have to do is to be and do their highest potential. This way of life creates pathways that are easy to traverse for all concerned.
We moved to a serene beach side independent bunglow in Neelangarai in May 2022. The calm and the amazing silence was healing and nourishing in this location till The Lotus Foundation handed over The Day Centre to another organisation under a new management. The Day Centre continues to operate in Neelangarai albeit under a new banner and management.
In April 2024, The Lotus Foundation initiated a new venture Samarpan Learning Centre in Ashok Nagar to continue serving the children in a divine manner.
Our Core:
The Lotus Foundation bases its work on ideas inspired from the vibrational and energetic stance of Love, Freedom and Joy.
Our Core draws from the teachings of Thay, Thich Nhat Hanh. We are inspired by the Buddha’s teachings of the Four Noble Truths and The Eight Fold Noble Path as a way of life. We aspire to create a harmonious community living facility to provide life-long care to the Autists and their families.
Our Mission:
Heartism, the curriculum we practise at Lotus, believes in The Law of Attraction.
Mission of Heartism is to welcome, love and educate the individuals with Autism, their immediate families, neighbourhood, community and society at large whosoever is willing to view Autism as Another Way of Life.
To share the idea of Heartism in the community with the specific intention of co-creating with those who are ready for a happy, love-filled, free life.
We are the loving environment, in which our community of people specifically the Autists, perennially become themselves, in joyful expansion of their consciousness, in their highest freedom, to walk the path in tune with their inner divinity.
The Lotus Foundation is a sacred space where Autists and those associated with the children with Autism can live their life in PEACE, FREEDOM, ENDLESS LOVE and JOY.
The Children are masters of energy. They hold a sacred space within themselves for humanity to evolve to the next higher realm.
We believe that Autists are a highly evolved and high vibrational beings.
Our Community Philosophy
Based on the ‘Fundamental Social Principle’ – Rudolf Steiner stating as follows:
“The well-being of a community of people working together will be the greater, the less the individual claims for himself the proceeds of his work, i.e. the more of these proceeds he makes over to his fellow-workers, the more of his own needs are satisfied, not out of his own work but out of the work done by others.”
Our Guiding Principle
“Education is always self-education, and as teachers and educators we are merely the environment in which the child is educating himself. We have to provide the most favorable environment so that the child will be able to educate himself according to his inner destiny”
– Rudolf Steiner
We are a registered Welfare Trust, an NGO working in the area of disabilities, rehabilitation and healing of people with Autism and related disorders. Your donations are exempt from income Tax vide 80G facility.