How It All Began
by the GBPI Team

May 2004
Levi Ben-Shmuel was the founder of the never-to-be-born Golden Blossom Project. The inspiration for the project came to him while he was living in Jerusalem in early 2000. During the height of the dot-com boom a friend was struggling to raise funds in the States for the only Palestinian school in the West Bank devoted to peace and democracy. A vision flashed through his head - a Web site that would allow people all over the U. S. to see and hear from the children who needed the school. The vision expanded to helping nonprofits from all sectors, and all over the world, to take advantage of the Web to reach donors yearning for a deeper experience of giving through making a direct connection with the people they were helping.

Coupled with the trend of donors’ desiring more involvement in giving, Levi thought that with the amount of money made in the 90’s in the U.S. and the increasing savvy of Internet users, it was a natural to use the Web to raise much needed money for struggling nonprofits doing great work in the world.

After a two and a half month trip to India, Nepal and Tibet, Levi moved to the Bay Area with his wife to actualize the Golden Blossom vision. The name for the organization came to him during a meditation in Berkeley. It had a wonderful feel to it. He wasn’t sure exactly how it fit his vision, but he trusted that it was the right name for the organization.
It was slow starting The Golden Blossom in California. The economy had changed with the collapse of the dot-com boom. Levi found it tough starting a new organization while adjusting to living in the States after over nine years abroad, plus there were the stresses of adjusting to being newly married. He and his wife decided to move to New York to be closer to his family for the arrival of their first child.

Levi continued to work on the Golden Blossom. Virtually everyone he talked to about the idea thought it was a winner. He put together a proposal and began the incorporation process in New York. Lo and behold, the state of New York rejected his application to be a nonprofit corporation. Based on his statement of intent the state thought he should apply as a for-profit corporation. Later the state would prove to be right! At this point life was moving Levi in other directions and he put the Golden Blossom on hold.

In June of 2003 the Golden Blossom was reborn. Devorah Lotzar was guided to take up the vision of the Golden Blossom. Initially, she saw it becoming an organization dedicated to helping children all over the world, particularly in the East, to grow in the knowledge that they are loved and valued in themselves, by means of spiritual music and other methods. Now the name that Levi got over two years earlier made sense: children are little golden blossoms waiting to bloom.
Devorah recalled, “I got a sense of there being a peace and unity of the East and West, unity among the nations, a unity among the world religions. I sensed God’s desire to dissolve the things that separate us. My understanding was that the Golden Blossom was to participate in the bigger unification that God wants for the world. I saw us in contact with all kinds of people of different faiths. I saw a healing of the East and the West.”

Devorah’s fiancé Eliyahu (now her husband) also felt inspired by the project and fully supported the Golden Blossom. The two of them worked with Levi to help the vision come into being.

Later that year in November and December, the vision was expanded significantly again to become a vehicle for expressing love and tolerance between East and West through marketing products and services that support that goal. Golden Blossom Projects International was born – a for-profit corporation that would eventually have a non-profit organization along side it, to express in more direct ways GBPI's social concerns for the world. Throughout the year Levi, Devorah and Eliyahu continued to meet, pray and meditate on the vision and its direction.

It turns out that Levi’s job was to hold the vision until it was ready to be born in a much different way than he had envisioned. Just as a mother holds her child in the womb for nine months, Levi held the vision for three years believing that it would come to fruition one day. At times his faith wavered, yet he never gave up on the vision. The birth of The Golden Blossom Projects International is a testimony to what can be when one lives faith and has the patience to back it up!