Projects: Tibetans

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Tibetan Enterprise Fund

Bringing good business ideas to life

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Tibetan exiles live in a precarious state.  What most refugees believed was a temporary residence has, generations later, become their permanent home.  More than 20,000 Tibetan refugees now call Nepal home and more than 100,000 live in India.  However, without legal citizenship, exiles cannot buy property or take out loans, making small business ideas hard to realize.

So in 2005, AHF launched the Tibetan Enterprise Fund, a micro-finance program for Tibetan refugees, and has to date invested $100,000 in small income-generating projects – by Tibetans for Tibetans – with many more on the way.  We’ve helped Tibetan settlements run dairy farms, grow mushrooms, package and sell incense, operate a telephone service, and even start an internet café.

In the Jampaling settlement in Pokhara, for example, AHF’s Tibetan Enterprise Fund made it possible for the camp to turn several large tracts of land into productive rice and wheat fields.  We helped them buy a new tractor to till the fields, plant the crops, and carry them to market.  The tractor has even been spotted hauling wood.  This simple purchase has enabled Tibetans in Jampaling to earn a small profit for the camp, increase their own food security, and repay their loan to TEF so other Tibetan camps can participate.

From cows to computers and tractors to telephones, AHF is making possible an important goal for Tibetan exiles: the pride and dignity of self-sufficiency.

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