Doncaster Buddhist charity receives prestigious award from King Charles

A Doncaster Buddhist and environmental charity hasreceived a prestigious honour from King Charles.

Volunteers at Gomde UK, a Buddhist meditation and retreat centre atLindholme, an ancient island on Hatfield Moors, have received The King’s Award for Voluntary Service, the UK’s highest honour for volunteer groups, equivalent to an MBE.

Founded in 2009 by Tibetan Buddhist master Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, Gomde began with a small group of students inspired to create a place to study Buddhism, practise meditation and spend time in retreat, developing compassion and wisdom to benefit others.

Taking on Lindholme, however, brought rather more responsibility than anyone had anticipated.

The group found themselves caring for 120 acres of woodland, meadows and rare peatland within the Humberhead Peatlands National Nature Reserve, alongside historic buildings in considerable need of repair.

With so much to learn and so few hands, they turned to their neighbours.

Historians, naturalists and conservationists generously shared their knowledge and skills, becoming friends and part of Gomde’s growing community.

Seventeen years later, the estate has grown to 180 acres, with more than 70 volunteers helping to care for it.

Together, they have transformed buildings in poor repair into a meditation hall, dining hall, café, community spaces, accommodation for retreatants and resident volunteers, and a public Buddhist library holding over 5,000 books. They have also helped install renewable energy systems.

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Some volunteers organise teachings and retreats with Buddhist masters and scholars from around the world, as well as regular meditation and study groups. Others cook, garden, maintain buildings and look after the library.

They also run open days, free children’s holiday activities, school visits, workshops, heritage events and interfaith gatherings, welcoming more than 1,500 visitors to the island each year.

Through these activities and hands-on volunteering, people gain practical skills and confidence, discover local history and form friendships with people of different ages, backgrounds and faiths.

Their care extends into the surrounding moors. Lindholme is home to rare, uncut lowland raised mire, an important wildlife habitat and natural carbon store.

Through the Mire Emergency project, volunteer naturalists and ecologists have developed ways to grow sphagnum moss, essential to peatland recovery, from small native samples collected on the island.

This year, they helped plant 2,000 sphagnum plants on damaged parts of Hatfield Moors.

Paulette Benjamin, Founding Trustee of Gomde UK, said: “When we first arrived at Lindholme, we came with the wish to benefit others. We very quickly discovered how much we needed others ourselves.”

“Our neighbours, volunteers and friends have helped us turn a rather daunting undertaking into something we could never have imagined at the beginning. This award belongs to everyone who has given their time, knowledge and care to Gomde over the years.”

Chris Perring, a volunteer from Sheffield, said: “Maybe you come here for meditation as I did, but then you find there is so much more.

“The teachings, the people, and the conservation work around you. It’s a real integration of human beings and the environment.”