2018 Projects
Completed the Stove Project!
TBCA’s Stove Project took almost 5 years to complete. In the tiny villages in the most remote areas of Himalayan Arunachal Pradesh, families lived in huts in each of which an unventilated open fire was used for heating and cooking. The smoke caused respiratory disease, blindness, and even death. TBCA provided the funds so that a total of 174 new ventilated clean cookstoves were locally made, delivered, and installed in every hut in the following villages: Yabab, Sherbang, Dunglang, Khokem, Muktur, Thiksi, and Surbin. The first villages could be reached by dirt roads that wound their way up and down this Himalayan region. The later villages could only be reached by foot, and so those cookstoves and chimneys had to be carried by villagers and yaks. Although TBCA donors provided the funds, the project was conceived and directed by Geshe Pema Dorjee, and the actual work and labor was done by a committee of volunteers who live in the nearby village of Lumla. Thanks to their efforts, 174 families now live year- round in a smoke-free home.
More 2018 TBCA Projects
TBCA provided educational scholarships to high school and college students in Nepal and India. In Nepal, scholarships were awarded to 2 students attending the Namgyal Higher Secondary School, and one scholarship went to a medical student in Kathmandu. In South India, a scholarship was awarded to a nursing student.
TBCA supported one young girl at the orphanage, Dicky Tsering Home. This afforded her room, board, education, and skills training.
TBCA supported 8 young monks for 1 year. These young monks come from impoverished families in remote Himalayan areas where opportunities such as education are not available. Yearly sponsorship gives these boys a safe and caring place to live, full room and board, a rigorous education, and clothing. The teachers and staff become role models who themselves live the humanitarian and ethical principles that they teach, and they are like family to the young monks. Eventually some of the young men become fully ordained monks, while others choose to return to their villages and live meaningful lives there as helpful members of their community.
TBCA continues to support the elderly in Arunachal Pradesh, India. The same committee that managed the Stove Project also volunteers to venture to remote villages and provide money, blankets, and general care to the elderly, Geshe Pema Dorjee lovingly calls this The Old Peoples Project.
TBCA has also sent financial support to South India for the studies of the young Rinpoche of the Bodong Porong Monastery.