Jain Center of
Washington State
MISSION
JCOWS mission to galvanize all the Jains in the state of Washington through a exclusive Jain Center, conducting regular and traditional Jain religious activities, imparting education about our religion and Jain way of life to kids (pathshala) and adults (swadhyay).
JCOWS aims to break all barriers that may divide the small Jain community of this region and our aim is to respect and include families from all sects, subsects, beliefs and language (Digambar, Deravasi, Sthanakvasi, Terapanthi, Shrimad Rajchandra, Hindi speaking, Gujarati speaking, etc.). We intend to do this by conducting events that cater to all and allowing individuals to lead events that they are interested to conduct for the community.
HISTORY
Our Society has started informally by a handful of families from their homes in 2016 and enabled hundreds of Jains the state of Washington to celebrate Payushan festival in a manner that Seattle has never before witnessed. A lot of Jain families in the region expressed their desire to pursue the goal of having our exclusive Jain temple and conduct activities that Jains they are all accustomed to back home in India, such as pooja, bhakti, swadhyay, oli ayambil, etc. As such, we needed to start working towards a formal setting and that has given birth to Jain Center of Washington State (JCOWS).
STATUS
More recently in 2017, the founding members have worked hard to put together a constitution after consulting several other Jain centers across North American, and the very first administrative committee has now been formed.