and liberation. Former projects Buddhist Alliance for Social Engagement The Buddhist Alliance for Social Engagement (BASE) is an extension of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship established in 1995, offering training and internship programs based on the model set forward by the Jesuit Volunteer Corps for social workers, activists and human service workers. It has chapters in various cities in the United States, including Berkeley, California, and Boston, Massachusetts, aiming to help professionals integrate their work with Buddhist practice. The idea behind BASE was originally conceived of by Robert Baker Aitken during discussions at a BPF meeting held in Oakland, California, in 1992, although it was Diana Winston who ultimately saw this vision through. She was somewhat disheartened to find that many of the BPF members were not actively engaged in meditation, so she set out to develop a "training program that would integrate Buddhist practice, social engagement, and community life into one organic whole." BASE is meant to provide for lay American Buddhists the kind of institutional support for the cultivation of socially engaged Buddhism available to Asian monks and nuns who are part of a monastic sangha. But it is also inspired by the BASE community of Latin America, which was founded in the 1970s as a vehicle for Catholic liberation theology...BASE emphasised social engagement as a path of Buddhist practice, not simply as a mode of Buddhist social service. — BASE participants combine weekly meetings for meditation and study with fifteen to thirty hours a week working in hospices, homeless shelters, prisons, medical clinics, and activist organizations. — Buddhist Peace Fellowship Prison Project Another outgrowth of the BPF is the Buddhist Peace Fellowship Prison Project, a committee within BPF which works with prisoners and their families and other religious groups in an effort to address violence within the criminal justice system. They oppose the implementation of capital punishment and also offer prisons information on chaplaincy opportunities. The committee's founding director was Diana Lion, who also has served as associate director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. ...the BPF Prison project...is attempting to transform the prison system through reforming the prison-industrial complex, abolishing the death penalty, and bringing the teachings of "dharma" to those persons confined in prisons and jails... — Buddhist AIDS Project In 1993 the Buddhist AIDS Project (BAP), based in San Francisco, California, was founded, a non-profit affiliate of the BPF run entirely by volunteers, serving individuals with