Melbourne, 16 August 2010: The Zoroastrian Association of Victoria (ZAV) announced today its participation at the United Nations conference on Global Health at the Melbourne Convention Center from 30 August to 1 September 2010.

Utilising the power of the individual to make a difference and have a positive impact on society, has been the paradigm established by Zarathushtra, the prophet of ancient Iran and it is one which Zoroastrians all over the world adopt today.

The Zoroastrian Association of Victoria (ZAV) will be teaming up with The Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America (FEZANA) and Ashta No Kai (For A Better Tomorrow), a literacy, health and development project for women in rural India, at the event which will highlight effective ways in which civil society can contribute to fostering global health: not just managing disease. The UN Millennium Development Goals were outlined in 2000 and this conference will chart the progress made thus far.

A workshop entitled "Public Health and the Millennium Development Goals: A Paradigm Shift for Global Health Care Outcomes" will be held on Wednesday, 1 September 2010 from 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm by members of the Zoroastrian community from the US, Australia and India.

"Political Will and the Power of the Individual are currently lacking in the modern global development effort. Overcoming these two hurdles requires unrelenting inspiration, persuasion and the ignition of one’s soul to help the poor," said Kayzad Namdarian, from Tonga, who will lead the workshop. In this era of globalization and ascendancy of social media, ideas will be explored that can improve health care particularly for those at the bottom of the socio economic pyramid. Learning to make appropriate life style choices which respect the connectivity of body, mind and spirit in maintaining good health will be the key message.

About The United Nations: The United Nations is central to global efforts to solve problems that challenge humanity. Cooperating in this effort are more than 30 affiliated organizations, known together as the UN system. For more information visit: www.un.org.

About the ZAV: Founded in 1978, the Zoroastrian Association of Victoria is the representative body of the Zoroastrian community in Victoria. For more information visit: www.zav.org.au.

About Fezana: Founded in 1987, FEZANA serves as the coordinating body for 26 Zoroastrian associations throughout the United States and Canada. FEZANA promotes the study, understanding and practice of the Zoroastrian faith. Visit: www.fezana.org.

About Ashta No Kai (For A Better Tomorrow): A women’s literacy, health and development project in rural India launched in 1998 to promote the empowerment of rural women and the education of the girl child. For more information email: ankindia@vsnl.com.

ZAV media relations: Jurstine Daruwalla – Mobile 0422 453 545 : Email: committee@zav.org.au

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/us/07religion.html

ON RELIGION
Matters of Heart and Faith Guide a Zoroastrian Matchmaker

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
Published: February 6, 2009
When Pouroo Dorabshaw flew to Los Angeles four years ago on a business
trip, her mother urged her to visit a family friend just outside the
city. The friend, it just so happened, was having a party the night of
Miss Dorabshaw's arrival. There was even another guest who could drive
her straight from the airport.

So through two hours of gnarled freeway traffic, Miss Dorabshaw, a
corporate trainer from Ohio, sat beside a California accountant named
Yazdi Dastur. They qui
ckly discovered they both were Zoroastrian by
faith, both Indian immigrants to the United States by experience, both
signed up for a conference on telemarketing.

Over the course of the party that evening, Mr. Dastur asked Miss
Dorabshaw if she was interested in visiting Disneyland the next day.
(No thanks, she had already gone.) Then how about Universal Studios?
(Sorry, been there, too.) But there were some new attractions there
that surely Miss Dorabshaw had not seen.

At about that persistent point, or maybe over dinner the next night at
Red Lobster, the realization crept over Miss Dorabshaw that all this
coincidence was not coincidental at all. It turned out that both Miss
Dorabshaw's mother and Mr. Dastur had used the same matchmaker, a
retired nuclear physicist in suburban Chicago, and the entire intent
of the weekend had been to nudge two unmarried Zoroastrians on the
road not merely to matrimony but endogamy.

Exactly that happened on April 7, 2006, in what Mrs. Dastur (as she
now is) believes to have been the first Zoroastrian wedding ceremony
in the history of Columbus, Ohio. Meanwhile, the matchmaker, Roshan
Rivetna, moved the papers with the Dasturs' personal information from
her active files into the folder containing about 50 other successes.

All this social engineering defies the American model of romantic
autonomy, love-for-love's-sake, which reaches its commercial apex a
week from now on Valentine's Day. It also goes beyond the sort of
fo
rmal and informal matchmaking that is common within dozens of
religious and ethnic communities. For the small and shrinking
Zoroastrian population, both in the United States and abroad, the
voluntary efforts of brokers like Mrs. Rivetna are driven by the
imperative of survival.

"I felt that I owed it to my ancestors," Mrs. Dastur said in a
telephone interview this week. "They did whatever they had to do to
survive. For them, I was trying to keep the culture and religion
alive."

Once the religion of millions in ancient Persia, Zoroastrianism now
counts 124,000 to 190,000 followers worldwide, and about 10,000 in the
United States. While the most precipitous decline in its numbers came
from the Muslim conquest of Persia in the 10th century, more recently
Zoroastrians have been, paradoxically, the victims of tolerance.

Their religion does not formally bar interfaith marriage. Ambitious,
highly educated and upwardly mobile, Zoroastrians inevitably study,
work and socialize outside the community.

In polyglot countries with (relatively speaking) substantial
Zoroastrian populations — Australia, Canada, England, India and the
United States — the rate of mixed marriage has reached as high as 40
percent in recent years, according to statistics compiled by Mrs.
Rivetna for the quarterly magazine Fezana Journal.

"I cannot but feel in my heart," she wrote in an editorial, "that,
unless we sit up and do something, it could very well be the 'sunset,'
if not
 the 'twilight.' "

Such anxiety is not, of course, the province of Zoroastrians alone.
The American Jewish community has been for decades in a state of
turmoil over an interfaith marriage rate that various studies place at
40 percent to 50 percent. Still, there are roughly 600 times as many
Jews in the United States as there are Zoroastrians. There are, for
that matter, more Amish, more Wiccans, more Taoists, more Baha'is.

Yet the fate of Zoroastrianism has some relevance to other faiths. At
its origins about 3,000 years ago, Zoroastrianism was the first
religion to worship a single god. Its theology perceived a cosmos
divided between good and evil, and an afterlife that could be achieved
through an earthly life of goodness. In all those concepts,
Zoroastrian doctrine influenced Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

"We are a roots religion," Mrs. Rivetna put it.

Her campaign to preserve her religion began about 20 years ago, as she
first collected the names and profiles of prospective matches. When
she and her husband, Rohinton, founded the Fezana Journal in 1991, she
started writing a monthly matrimonial column. It persists to this day,
offering thumbnail sketches and contact information for Zoroastrians
from Karachi to Sydney, from Manhattan to Mumbai.

"At first I was a little apprehensive," Mr. Dastur recalled of placing
his listing with Mrs. Rivetna. "It looks like you're on sale. But
 then
I started thinking rationally, that a lot of people would20see my ad,
rather than just telling people mouth to mouth."

What Mrs. Rivetna has done is bring a scientist's sense of order to
the traditional role of the Zoroastrian "aunty." That communal
endearment refers to a middle-aged or older woman likely to plop down
on the sofa next to any eligible young lady — who may at that moment
be rolling her eyes knowing what is coming next — and start talking up
"a nice Zoroastrian boy who's perfect for you."

The biannual conferences of Zoroastrians from throughout North
America, or less frequently from around the world, also serve a kind
of speed-dating purpose. Mrs. Rivetna gave major play in Fezana
Journal to the wedding of Cyrus Mehta, an immigration
lawyer-cum-conductor, and Liley Gheewalla, a financial analyst and
cellist, who had met through an all-Zoroastrian orchestra being
assembled to
 perform at the Zoroastrian World Congress.

Mrs. Rivetna has never even considered charging for her services.
"When a match is made," she said, "I'm amply rewarded."

61st Annual DPI/NGO Conference
Reaffirming Human Rights for All: The Universal Declaration at 60
UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France
September 3-5, 2008

 

Please see attachment for full release.

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