blog

Edmonton Fundraiser for SMD Boarding School and VVF

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 15:40:08 +0100

Back Over the Mountains: A Fundraiser and Silent Auction at the Blue Chair Cafe was a great success! Thanks to all who attended, donated, and are now part of this journey. And thanks to Jane Marshall and her son Benjamin for caring for the children of Shree Mangal Dvip Boarding School.

Watch Jane Marshall's video of Nepal and the event in Edmonton on her YouTube page.

http://youtu.be/gHJ3VwPv8Ns

Jane says, "A movie about my March 1st Fundraiser at the Blue Chair Cafe. Funds raised help support Shree Mangal Dvip Boarding School in Kathmandu, Nepal, and will help me complete my book about Edmonton's only Tibetan Buddhist monk and our adventures together."

SMD Director's Canada visit

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:34:16 +0100

Shirley Blair, director of SMD Boarding School in Nepal, met twice with interested people in Vancouver, showing her new slide show of the school and updating everyone on life at SMD.
Two supporters opened their home for a private presentation to 30 friends. A wonderful dinner was offered followed by the slide show and Q&A. Many questions about plans to move the school to a safer, cleaner location and about life for SMDers after graduation were answered. Look for the full update in the next VVF newsletter.
Shirley with FOUR SMD students who study in BC, Pasang on left (SFU), Nangsal (QUEST), Tashi in white (QUEST) and Phur Tenzin behind her (SFU) at the monastery in Richmond, BC.

SMD School Director visits Vancouver***

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 06:31:16 +0100

Join Us in Vancouver!!

*Shirley Blair, Director of SMD Boarding School is in Vancouver this week!!

Please join us
10:00 AM    THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23
The Terraces
1570    7 Avenue West
Vancouver, BC

(604) 738-8380

We will meet for a slide presentation of SMD Boarding School in the theatre at The Terraces.

Losar Greetings (Tibetan New Year)

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:18:02 +0100

Dear Friends of Vajra Vidya Foundation,

This is the time of the new year in the Tibetan lunar calendar. This is the Year of the Water Dragon. It is a time of renewal and celebration.

"The Losar Festival in Tibet is the biggest event in the year. Celebrated with great fervour the event is filled with age old ceremonies that commemorate the struggle between good and evil. The Tibetan people come out on the streets and chant, pass fire torches, dance and sing - a time for general merriment essentially!"

This year, however, activities are very subdued and distressed as tensions rise in Tibet and China and worldwide. Many monks and nuns have set themselves on fire to protest the lack of religious and political freedom in the Tibetan area. Just yesterday a 19-year-old monk self-immolated in protest.

Send out your prayers for peace in this Year of the Water Dragon.

Only two weeks until the Edmonton fundraiser

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:30:04 +0100

Jane Marshall's update.

Just over two weeks until Back Over the Mountains: A Fundraiser and Silent Auction.

Please join us! You can purchase tickets by clicking HERE.

In this week's update, I'd like to share some information about Shree Mangal Dvip Boarding School, where half your donations from our special evening will go. I was able to visit the school in 2009 and have written several articles about it:

The Fragile Walls of Learning. The Edmonton Journal, August 2008.

A Retrofitted Refuge. The Pegg, June 2009.

Nurturing a generous heart in Children a goal for many Edmonton parents. Edmonton Journal, January 2012. (Check out the video of my son Ben!)

The school is connected to my book project and has crept into our family's life, too. My kids collect bottles to help a young boy at SMD, and I've learned that these borderland children are connected to Kushok's ancestry, too. Kushok's deceased uncle was a well-loved Buddhist master who meditated and taught in the Himalayas where many of these children are born. I've attached photos of Kushok's uncle's monastery (his deceased uncle was the 16th Drakar Rinpoche, and his father took care of the monastery). Photos courtesy of Geshe Zopa's blog: Tsum Project

I hope they inspire you...

Until the next update, keep well. And thanks for supporting my project and the children of Shree Mangal Dvip!

Jane.

Jane Marshall, BA

Freelance Writer

See Jane Write

seejanewrite.ca

January 2012 Report from Lhi School (Himalayan Teachers Project)

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:46:10 +0100

ABOUT MY EXPERIENCE IN THE LHI VILLAGE SCHOOL
It's been six months that I’ve been teaching in Lhi village school. Within those days I felt very glad to help my own community and I never felt any regrets about taking a Gap year to give service.

I didn't get any language problems during my teaching and when I started to work in the school I thought that there would be someone to manage us but later on I came to know that there is no one, and everything we do we must fix by ourselves. So I really felt independent.

I love to chat and work with the village kids. At night I taught the adults for three months; it is more harder than teaching children. They understand very easy but they will forget so fast. Whenever the villagers gather for Results Day and other work, we give speeches about the importance of education, our school rules, health and hygiene and so on. Tsewang Sangmo and I thought that it would encourage parents to send their kids to school.

The problem that I face is that we don't have enough teaching materials and class rooms. Mostly I spend time in the Nursery class. I have 26 students. It is very difficult! to manage but anyhow, with the help of SMD Reading Angels’ training I have managed. So, whenever I face difficulties I thought about SMD and then solved them. In this way SMD means a lot to me.

ABOUT LHI SCHOOL AND STUDENTS
We have four class rooms and one office. There are 32 lay students and 22 monks. The kids are very small; they are between 9 to 14 years age. they are very cute and frank, so we SMDers never feel lonely. Our students like to play football but we don't have a big ground so they make fewer numbers of people to play in the small ground. The kids are eager to learn new things and they feel very happy when they get new things. I LOVE TO WORK WITH THEM. !!!!!!!!

I got a very wonderful time and experience in the village by sharing knowledge with innocent kids.! Today what I am is because of very Venerable Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, our HTP sponsors and SMD family.

With love Migmar Bhuti. B374

Thanks to all our monthly donors!!!

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:10:07 +0100

We want to extend a sincere THANK YOU!!! to all our generous monthly donors. Donating through CanadaHelps regularly keeps funds coming in on a regular basis which help us to plan better for the needs of the children in Nepal. Even a small monthly amount of $10 can make a big difference in the lives of the kids under our umbrella.

It's easy to set up a monthly account on CanadaHelps and designate the child you are sponsoring or a special project you want to support, such as solar batteries, driver training, fruit purchase or running shoes.

Go to http://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s61038 to get started.

Volunteer teaches art at SMD Boarding School

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:32:15 +0100

Harika: a Heart's Home
My goodness, what can I possibly say about my experience at Shree Mangal Dvip that could adequately capture what I felt and feel inside? I felt welcomed. I felt loved and appreciated. I felt a kindness that seems to be harder and harder to find these days. There's a light inside the students of SMD— an insatiable curiosity, a positivity and compassion, and it moved me. I feel changed somehow.

Shree Mangal Dvip is a school founded by The Venerable Thrangu Rinpoche to provide Himalayan children with an education, housing, medical and dental care that they would otherwise not have access to in their remote mountain villages. Many of the villages are without roads, electricity, sanitation, schools and hospitals— and with Nepal being the poorest nation in Asia, recently ravaged by a civil war, many of the children were accepted on a life-or-death basis. The children are Buddhist, most of them culturally Tibetan— minorities, considered lower on the Hindu caste system. One of the main goals of SMD is to preserve the culture, language and Buddhist way of life of the Himalayas. The school integrates monks, nuns and laychildren, most of whom board at the school and have not seen their family in a very, very long time. One young student told me she hadn't seen her parents in five years. Roads are not always passable, and most of the children's villages are a further week to two weeks trek.

Shree Mangal Dvip runs entirely on donations. The school is bursting at the seams with a terribly long waiting list of deserving kids. I can't tell you how bright these children are— their dedication to learning and to each other is inspiring. Older children are often seen playing with and helping out the wee ones— their sense of responsibility is incredible. I don't know about you, but when I was a child, I got to a point where I just wanted to be around older kids, and found the younger ones a nuisance (and I naturally, was a nuisance to the big kids myself!). The students really look after each other— and the seniors! Oh the seniors, my heart has a special place for them. I have never met a more responsible and caring bunch of teenagers. Twenty-three teenage boys and girls live in a flat together with no furniture except their beds and a long, low table on the floor for dining. The seniors learn how to earn a living by working at the school, they learn to budget by paying the rent and utilities for their flat (owned by the school), and help one another by chipping in to purchase supplies, cook dinner and clean.

In addition to working in the library cataloguing and repairing books, I taught after-school art classes to a bunch of extremely gifted and hard-working students. I was so impressed by their enthusiasm for drawing and desire to learn. I couldn't believe how far they had come in such a short time— and they have little to work with in terms of supplies— what they could do with a plain old pencil and an A4 sheet of copy paper!

Needless to say, I plan on returning. The experience I had at SMD was one of those pivotal life-changing, life-brightening moments that pass far too quickly but are remembered for a lifetime. There are a number of ways you can help— visit the school's website and click on the How You Can Help section. SMD also has a wishlist on Amazon, where you can purchase books for the library.

To the students and staff of Shree Mangal Dvip, thank you, thank you, thank you. You all have a home in my heart.
READ THE WHOLE BLOG AND SEE PHOTOS: http://harikaszaza.blogspot.com/2010/09/hearts-home.html

Happy Year of the Dragon!!

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 04:16:45 +0100

To all our precious donors and sponsors and friends.
Happy Year of the Dragon.
May peace fill your hearts and our world.

SMD Volunteer's Article in Nepal Newspaper

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:57:01 +0100

Once is never enough Samantha Zaza Kathmandu Post January 13, 2012

Sometime during this wet summer, when I was asked what I loved most about Nepal, the answer leaped from my lips without hesitation—the people. It was my second monsoon in Nepal, volunteering as an art teacher at Shree Mangal Dvip School for Himalayan Children (SMD) in Bouddha. I came to SMD by accident; I was meant to volunteer at another school in Bandipur, but due to what I can only call a fortunate miscommunication, I found myself amid a little sea of smiling faces.

As a young girl, I had dreamt of coming to Nepal. Himalaya was a magic word for me, and Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary were my heroes. I wanted to be them, climbing my bunk bed with a rope I crafted from my mother’s belts. I searched for photos of Nepal in National Geographics, and longed to taste butter tea. This pull inside me to see Nepal only intensified as I grew up, and the more I learned about Nepal, the more I wanted to do something beyond sightseeing. I wanted to give something, but the only thing I had to offer was my passion for art, and the skills I have as an artist. So when I heard of an opportunity to volunteer to teach at a school, I jumped at the chance. Soon, I found myself aboard a plane, peering out the window at the gleaming white facades of mountains, a sight which had, until that very moment, been only a dream.

I remember the very first time I met my students at Shree Mangal Dvip—a dozen pair of shy, yet curious eyes staring up at me in the afternoon light. With a thin stack of A4 copier paper, a handful of pencils and erasers, we began our journey. As the summer rolled on, I watched these delightful, talented kids grow in confidence and skill—and something unexpected happened within me, something I can only describe as an unfolding. I felt different. The students at SMD, and the people I had met in Nepal, were now woven into my life; they became a part of me, and as the time for my inevitable return to Istanbul approached, I felt an ache in my heart.

I was back in the air on my way home, staring at those white peaks above the clouds, thankful for happy accidents, thankful for whatever had been responsible for bringing me to Nepal in the first place. The monsoon’s drumming on rooftops, the gentle dance of the prayer flags, the melodious Om Mani Padme Hum, and the beautiful children I had been so lucky to have known, all remained at the forefront of my thoughts. It was then I knew I had to go back. I began to plan my return.

Some months later, gliding past the layers of rice paddies and the eruption of rectangular apartment buildings towards Tribhuvan International Airport a second time, my heart was pounding so hard in my chest that I had to remind myself to breathe. On the other side of the arrival doors, dearly missed friends were waiting, and they were about to take me home to my beloved kids, who I had waited anxiously for so long to see. A year feels endless when in the midst of it, but so very short when it is over—and I’ll never forget the three words uttered by one of my students: You came back!
*******
Samantha is an artist based in Istanbul and has volunteered as an art teacher in Kathmandu in 2010 and 2011. She blogs at www.harikaszaza.blogspot.com