By Michael Stoner, President, Valley Insight Board of Directors

You may have noticed that we’ve begun sending a bi-weekly email with a listing of Valley Insight’s upcoming offerings for practice and Dharma study. This is a way of keeping everyone informed about these wonderful opportunities––and also an acknowledgement that we now have so many things going on that a reminder of all of them is really helpful!

In that spirit, I always enjoy looking back over the past year of our Sangha’s life for an “annual report” of the abundant opportunities we’ve created collectively to celebrate the Dharma. It feels as if our Sangha is very lively right now. And if you look at the list of what we did last year, it is a lot for a small group to accomplish!

Practicing, Studying and Teaching the Dharma

We began 2024 with a morning practice and friendship celebration led by Doreen Schweizer, Subha Srinivasan, and Karen Summer on January 1. What an appropriate start for an active year of study and practice!

Our three weekly sits flourished during the year. Karen Summer leads our Monday sit, which meets in our Online Dharma Hall every week. The Tuesday sit meets in person on the first Tuesday of the month at St. Barnabas in Norwich and meets in our Online Dharma Hall on the other Tuesdays in the month. Lee Steppacher coordinates a teaching team of Charlene Gates, Adam Knowlton-Young, Peg Meyer, and Penelope Prendergast. And Doreen’s Thursday sit continues to meet in person and online every week. Joel Lazar leads the sit on the second Thursday of the month.

Doreen guides a group on weekday mornings with a metta-infused sit followed by a recitation of the refuges and precepts. We also added a silent sit on Sunday evenings––anyone can log in and sit with others while a Valley Insight teacher holds the space.

We now have a number of other ongoing practice and discussion groups focusing on issues of concern to our sangha:

• Mindfully Aging Together, a group held on Mondays and facilitated by Doreen, focuses on conversation on the topics of aging, illness,and death.
• Every month,Sangha Circle, facilitated by Molly Grover and Gina Sonne, enabled participants to discuss the joys and challenges encountered in practice. [This group was put on hold in January 2025.]
• In a monthly Racial Affinity Gathering, facilitated by Peg Meyer and Carol Rougvie, discussions focus on challenges and issues in racial awareness.
• In the monthly discussions in the Peace and Justice Affinity Group, people engaged in peace and social justice can share thoughts and concerns about national and world Joel Lazar coordinates the group.
• Lee Steppacher led a series of Nature Walks in Thetford and plans to continue them in 2025.

Subha Srinivasan offered a number of short-term experiences and practice sessions this year, including a Mindfulness Group for Young Adults; a day of Metta Practice; an Insight Dialogue Group for Asian-Americans; and a series of Mindfulness Practice days where participants could drop in at will.

Ajahn Jayanto joined us again this year for a daylong retreat in September.

This year, we worked with the City of Lebanon and the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire to organize a community reading of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 Speech, “What to the slave is your Fourth of July?” This was the fifth year we’ve done this––and we joined with more than 15 other New Hampshire communities in reading Douglass’s historic protest speech and reflecting on its meaning.

Our Support Sangha team, led by  Terry Cioffredi, Connie O’Leary, Mindy Schorr, and Shideko Terai, continues to offer food and other types of assistance to those in our sangha who need it. This year, we added a dedicated email address for Support Sangha: anyone who needs assistance can email . Members monitor this address and will respond quickly to those in need.   

In March, we celebrated Doreen Schweizer’s 79th birthday with a special party at  AVA Gallery in Lebanon. More than 50 people gathered to honor Valley Insight’s co-founder and our senior teacher for more than two decades. As part of the celebration, the board renamed our Dharma Study Scholarships, which Doreen founded with a generous donation in 2017, in her honor. The board allocated $2,500 to the fund and a number of other donors contributed, raising the total in the The Doreen Schweizer Dharma Study Fund to almost $7,000.

In past years, the fund has been used to support such activities as retreat attendance and online study. This year, the scholarship committee––consisting of Doreen, Karen Summer (as guiding teacher), and Michael Stoner (as Board president)––decided to offer a large grant to a dedicated Valley Insight practitioner in support of enrollment in Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach’s teacher training program. We’re honored to be able to help a serious practitioner deepen knowledge and practice in the Dharma and to support a new mindfulness teacher in our Sangha.

Every year, Buddhists around the world celebrate Vesak Day––the day on which we celebrate the Buddha’s birth, awakening, and death. This year, we celebrated Vesak Day in May at St. Barnabas and in our Online Dharma Hall.

Board of Directors

The Sangha’s board of directors works quietly and largely behind the scenes to help keep things running smoothly. The fact that they do is a huge tribute to the dedication of our board members!

In 2023, we spent a great deal of time thinking through and rewriting our bylaws, which had not been reviewed since the Sangha was formally organized in 2006. We didn’t have a major challenge like that in 2024.

One important decision we made this year was to investigate––and pay for––liability insurance for Valley Insight teachers. Like other sanghas in our tradition, we do not compensate teachers for leading sits or retreats, or mentoring practitioners. Instead, practitioners offer dana as an expression of gratitude for the teachings offered. But our board recognized that in this day and age teachers may have a concern about their liability when they lead one of our groups or offer a program. There is a risk, however small, that someone might have a reaction to something that happens in one of them and seek legal recourse. We were able to find and secure a group policy that shields our teachers from this potential liability.

One of the practices we initiated at our board meetings several years ago was to take time at the beginning of each meeting to offer gratitude to members of the Sangha for their contributions to Valley Insight. The list is often a long one!

In that spirit, I’d like to acknowledge our board members and express my deep gratitude for their time and attention to the myriad details that keep our Sangha running:

• Michele Burlew(our secretary, who takes detailed notes on our meetings), Adam Knowlton-Young, and Joel Lazar;
• Karen Summer, who, as guiding teacher, attends our board meetings and offers her wise insight during our deliberations;
• Sue McGilvray, treasurer, who has helped Valley Insight develop healthy and transparent financial management and has worked hard to ensure that our accounting and reporting are accurate.

This year, two long-serving board members ended their terms and left the board. Charlene Gates served multiple terms and was our secretary for three years. Carol Rougvie served a three-year term, which ended in December. We’re very grateful to the two of them for their service––and we miss their wisdom in our discussions.

And two new people joined our board: Michael Dannehy and Ellen Hollyday. We’re pleased to have them join us: it’s always refreshing when new perspectives inform our monthly discussions.

The board meets the second Thursday of every month and Sangha members are welcome to attend meetings. If you’re interested in reading the summaries of board meeting discussions, please email Michael Stoner ().

Our Sangha’s generosity in 2024

We’ve always relied on the generosity of our Sangha. Literally. Our many, many volunteers make everything possible––without the gifts of time that allow us to offer so many beneficial events, like the ones I celebrated above, Valley Insight would not exist.

That generosity begins with our teachers, who envision and initiate many of the opportunities for learning and practice. So let me thank our teachers: Joel Lazar, Peg Meyer, Doreen Schweizer, Subha Srinivasan, Lee Steppacher, and Karen Summer. In the Insight tradition, teachers don’t charge for leading a sit or creating a series of topical sessions. We, as practitioners, support their teaching through attention––and, financially, through dana.

Many, many others contribute time to Valley Insight, too: from people who serve on our board to the facilitators of the Tuesday sit, to those who manage or set up retreats. We couldn’t function without this generosity.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

Valley Insight is also blessed with generous financial support. If you wonder why you got a lot of emails about fundraising in November and December, it’s because our Annual Appeal is now the only source of income we can rely on.

In 2024 Valley Insight received $33,702 from our Annual Appeal and $3,112 in month-to-month donations. And our teachers received $12,908 in dana through online donations. When you offer dana to teachers through Valley Insight’s website, we send your offering directly to the teacher, just as when you pay them directly by cash or personal check.

In total, 77 people contributed to Valley Insight this year. We had seven new donors and 38 people who gave to our sangha for at least four years in a row. Thank you to each and every one of you!

With deep gratitude

Each year when I write this report, I am grateful for the occasion to recall the many opportunities we have had to study, practice, and share the Dharma and the contributions of the many people who have made this happen.

Thank you! I am deeply moved, and deeply grateful, for your practice, your inspiration, and your example.

with metta,

Michael Stoner