Sambhota Tibetan School Shillong is situated in the North-Eastern part of India. It is in the state of Meghalaya where a considerable number of Tibetans reside and do petty businesses for their living. The school not only provides quality education to the children but also acts as an ambassador of our rich culture and tradition by actively participating in the state organised programs.

Though the school has shown some positive result as far as the standard of education is concerned, the school faced some problems relating to their infrastructure with leaking roofs, lack of basic teaching aids, library books, reference materials and other audio-visual teaching aids.

So when they approached us with their needs, we found their needs to

be genuine and something that required immediate help. We then provided them with the necessary fund to carry out the purchases and renovation works.

With the fund the school received from us the school purchased a photo copier and a fax machine which they said not only saved them money on stationeries but also saved some precious time as they had to go to the town which is 5 km away from the school whenever they needed to do some photocopies or send faxes.

The colour television they bought with the help has made the life of the students in the hostel more fun and entertaining.

The staff too felt more at ease after the staff quarters were renovated, roofs repaired and rooms refurnished.

“The teaching aids and reference materials have been of great help to make the lessons more interesting and effective”, says the school headmaster. He further says, “The students have developed good reading habits and a special liking for Tibetan story books”.

The Department of Education, CTA Dharamsala extended their “sincere gratitude to Tibet Charity and its members for their generous support. “ They further wrote, “It would not have been possible for us to implement this project without your kind support. We eagerly look forward for your continuous warm support in future too”.

Tibet Charity has been running English classes for newcomers from Tibet as well as for those who could not receive or complete their formal education. At one academic session we receive more than 200 students from various parts of India as well as from countries such as Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and Mongolia.

Both our students and the teachers have always felt the need for standardised textbooks so that the teaching and learning process could become more systematic. Because of this some of our volunteers in the past, especially Mr. Neil Pollick from England worked on coming up with textbooks suitable for our students.

Though textbook materials did become ready, we lacked the funding to get them printed. Since many of our students are newcomers from Tibet, with no source of income, asking them to bear the full cost of textbooks was almost out of question.

This was the situation when Israeli Friends of Tibetan People came forward to help us by sponsoring the textbooks for our beginners’ classes.

I, on behalf of all our students, thank IFTIP and all the people associated with the organization for this kind gesture. This kind act of yours has made life much easier for our teachers, not to mention the students.

We hope that others will follow your excellent example by offering to help with our other classes in the future.

25th August 2009

Tibet Charity India, with the help of generous sponsorship from Ven. Karma Yeshi and Red Cross Limoux, successfully ran educational tours for the staff and students at Sambhota Tibetan School, Shillong and the Central School for Tibetans, Chauntra respectively. The students were mainly those who could not go home for their vacation as their parents could not afford to take them home.

The two schools ran two separate trips. Sambhota Tibetan School, Shillong ran their trip in early June and all students and staff enjoyed the tour immensely. The first day of the trip consisted of a visit to Lady Hydrai Park, on the outskirts of Shillong. After that the children visited Crinoline Swimming Pool. For many, this was the first time they had seen a swimming pool and they loved diving in and swimming in the clear blue water.

The next day of the tour the children were given the opportunity to learn about different cultures and indigenous peoples by visiting museums and other areas of natural beauty. Visiting Shillong Peak gave them the chance to learn about the local Khasi people and their way of life from local guides. The visit to Don Bosco Museum for Indigenous Cultures was one of the highlights of the trip. The day then ended with a peaceful visit to Umiam Lake which is 20 km from Shillong.

The final day of the trip incorporated a visit to two museums, a science exhibition. The tour ended with a memorable trip to Ward’s Lake. In total, 85 people went on the trip and every agreed that it was an unforgettable summer vacation.

The same reflections were also echoed by CST Chauntra after their tour. It was a much bigger tour, with 200 students taking part. It took place in near-by Galu and the summer camp lasted for the whole of the 20 day vacation period. It was a perfect opportunity to study and appreciate the beauty of the natural world and many students even took to cleaning the forest areas. Through community

living and co-operation, the students learnt many invaluable life skills. As the Principal of the school so accurately stated, ‘in nut shell - it was a successful and a memorable summer camp’.

The staff and students at CST Chautra and Sambhota Tibetan School, Shillong, along with Tibet Charity India, would like to pass on their deepest thanks to the generosity of Ven. Karma Yeshi and Red Cross Limoux. Without the financial help and support of these contributors, the summer educational tours would not have been able to have taken place. see more photos...

STS Shillong is a primary school located in Arunachal Pradesh in the North East part of India. The school has 93 students and 29 staff members. Most of the children are from various remote

places around the area such as Shillong, Dimapur, Itanagar, Kohima, Tawang and most importantly from remote areas of Tuting, Arunachal Pradesh.

The school was facing problems in poor hygiene standards due to lack of clean toilets and bathrooms. Earlier children used to relieve themselves everywhere during early morning as there were only two funcational toilets for 122 people including students. This caused a lot of health issues and made the place unhygienic with bad smells. It was also very inconvenient and unsanitary for female staff and students with no proper toilets around.

With the help of Save Tibet Austria the school now has adequate number of toilets and bathrooms which gave the place a much better look and it has also become more hygienic. They can now bathe in the nice closed bathrooms instead of having to bathe in the open.

We thank Save Tibet Austria on behalf of the staff and the students of the school for their kind support.

7th May 2009

In 2005, Department of Education has organized first ever Spiritual and Cultural teacher training and on its completion placements were given in secondary and senior secondary schools.

It has been a long felt need to have spiritual and cultural teachers at the middle schools also to assist in the spiritual and moral development of children from an early age.

With this intention, 3 months’ training for 16 religious and cultural teachers was organized from the 4th of October 2008 till 7th January 2009. After the successful completion of the training, all the trainees were given placement in various Tibetan schools and institutes.

With this training we hope that the upcoming generation of Tibetans will be able to receive in-depth knowledge on Buddhism and they will also be in a position to implement them in their daily lives as they grow up. With the growing restriction on practicing one’s faith back inside Tibet, the onus is on the Tibetans in exile to keep the flame of Buddhism burning.

We are very happy to have been able to provide financial support to carry out this workshop. We are very grateful to Venerable Lakha Rinpoche in particular and Tibet Charity Denmark in general for providing us the financial support.

- 29th April 2009

A workshop on setting up kitchen gardens in schools was organized at CST Chauntra from 23rd to 27th March 2009.

The workshop was conducted by Mr. Sten Melson and Mrs. Nette from Denmark with kind financial support from DANIDA. The workshop was attended by staff and students from various Tibetan schools under Sambhota Tibetan Schools Society and Tibetan Children’s Village.

The main objectives behind organizing the workshop are us under:

1. To instill gardening skill among the school children so that they can set up their own kitchen gardens when they grow up.
2. Encourage schools to cultivate their own vegetables (as much as possible) so that they can save on the money spent on buying vegetables from the market.
3. Introduce organic farming to the students.
4. Educate the schools on proper dietary habits
5. Correlate classroom teaching with practical work in the field

Mr. Sten Melson gave detail information on setting up kitchen gardens and the general technicalities related to planting vegetables and fruits.

Mrs. Nette talked on the nutritional values of various corps and fruits.

The participants were also taken to the state Agricultural universities where they learnt the composition and the requirements of soil for proper growth of plants.

They thoroughly enjoyed the visit to the vermicompost site where they received knowledge on special kind of earthworm that helps in creating manure from the house and other wastes.

On the final day they expressed their gratitude to all those concerned in organizing this workshop which they said has been very beneficial.

They have all shown great eagerness to get the kitchen garden started as soon as they reach back to their schools. Mr. Karma Chungdak la, the Director of Sambhota Tibetan Society promised all necessary help to the

schools in setting up and successfully running the schools under his administration.

We thank all those involved in making this workshop a grand success. Our special thanks goes to the School Administrations, STSS, the Resource persons and the participants, Mr. Peter Hallum, Tibet Charity Denmark and the staff & the students of CST Chauntra – the host school.

Last but not the least we thank DANIDA for their kind financial support without which this workshop would not have happened.

21th April 2009

Tibet Charity hosted an internet security awareness program with 20 students from November 17 – 19. The topics covered were:

Basic TCP/IP understanding, understanding commonly used words in network security, understanding today’s internet threats, practice with some security tools, and understanding how to protect yourself.

The second session with about 10 students, conducted between 20-28 November was on intermediate network and security. The students studied the basics of:

Understanding the TCP/IP protocol suite and its diagnostics tools (OSI layers, IP addressing v4, subnetting, DHCP, ARP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, etc…), Lab exercises with Microsoft Windows diagnostic tools, Understanding Domain Name System (DNS),

understanding Network Address Translation (NAT) and Firewall, understanding commonly today’s security threats and how to protect you from them, and lab exercises with third-party tools to help protect the Microsoft Windows Operating System.

The class was conducted by Simon Veilleux from Montreal, Canada who has 12 years of experience in computer science out of which he spent 6 years working in the field of networking security for small, medium and large institutions. He says, “Even though I was the teacher, I truly feel that I was much more of a student in those courses than a teacher.  Volunteering was a new experience for me, and it has been an absolute wonderful experience! The experience you get from such a invaluable time gives you reward far beyond what you are actually teaching.”

30th November 2008