Zerbanoo Gifford - ASHA Foundation

ASHA Foundation

Zerbanoo is the Founding Director of the ASHA Foundation, a charity which encourages and supports philanthropy worldwide and works for interfaith and intercultural understanding. The core of the Foundation’s work is the ASHA Centre in the Forest of Dean, west Gloucestershire, England, which promotes peace and understanding amongst diverse groups especially the young. The Centre fosters community participation through a holistic programme of performing and visual arts, conservation projects, sustainable living and personal transformation. In an example of its pioneering work, groups of Arab and Jewish Israeli young people spend a month at the Centre and having overcome their initial hostility, work together to create a play which they then take home and perform in Israel, uniting audiences from their deeply divided communities. The experiment has now been expanded to include young people from South Africa, India, Britain and other divided communities worldwide.