This idea came about this Aug when a group of us were attending Geshe Dorji Damdul's teaching in Deer Park Institue in Bir. We heard from Geshe la that there are some students in various TCVs have never been out of the village during their education there solely due to the fact that they have no family nor relative to take them in during the winter holidays, or they are orphans. This is not very healthy to the student's growing up in terms of mental well being. Though activities have been arranged for some during the recent years but these students will be going out to the community with nothing much in their pocket to spend...not like our children here where everything is well provided for. By the end of the week 26,800rs were donated by students from Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong thanks to their boundless compassion.
After much fact finding to see what are inplace for these students, we have now given an amount of 27,000rs to TCV HQ to provide for a total of 78 students to participate in the winter programmes this year. The students are divided into 2 groups:-
(a) 15 students from TCV Gopalpur will take part in Asian Youth Festival to be held from Jan 21-27 in Kolkata. This is a bi-annual affair and will have cultural exchange of songs and dances from India and Asian countries.
(b) 63 students from TCV from all branches in H.P. and Bylakuppe will go to Gyudmey Monastery in Hunsur, Karnataka to study Tibetan literature, grammar, Buddhist philosophy plus pilgrimage to other Tibetan monasteries around Mysore. Their stay is from 16th Jan till 25th Feb.
Each student will be given 300rs as pocket money. The balance of 3,600rs will be kept in the accounts for us to top up every year. Therefore, this will be a continuious effort on the part of Varada Effort to help these children to go out and see the world. We make our fund raising drive an annual affair and eventually we hope to reach a target of giving every child 500rs as pocket money.
Please give us the support that we need and we thank you on behalf of the students in advance.
