Projects: Education

A school building, in our experience, doesn’t say much about education.  To make them into places where children can come and learn takes, well, a lot of things.  Tibetan children in remote areas sometimes live far away from the nearest school, so we build a hostel – as we did in Manang, where 64 youngsters now live together and study.  It doesn’t end with construction either.  For the last twelve years we’ve funded teacher’s salaries, but also housemothers and cooks – because the community couldn’t afford them, and we knew the school and hostel would otherwise sit empty.  

In other cases, we bring the kids to the school so they can continue their education.  From Manang, the nearest middle school is a five day walk away, at the Hyangjia Tibetan Settlement in Pokhara.  So that the remote area kids can continue their education they live together, like a large extended family, in the Hyangjia school hostel, and we supply uniforms, books, shoes, medicine and pay for the all-important cooks. (Yes, cooks are a theme.  Hungry kids can’t learn well.)  Last year we installed solar-powered lights because electricity was unreliable and the candles they were using were unsafe.  

We work closely with the settlements, stepping in as needed, so children don’t get lost in an educational gap.  We learned from settlement leaders that many Tibetan youth couldn’t go to college because their families simply couldn’t afford to pay; refugee families have few resources.  We feel this final step is so critical that we created three college scholarship programs for motivated students.  To date, 60 students have graduated from colleges in Nepal and India and 62 are enrolled for the coming year.  They are succeeding.  And they are motivated, and have the skills, to give back to their communities.