‘Art reflects the beauty of human soul.’ I read this line somewhere, and at that time I thought what is the beauty of a human soul? With time, I came to understand that art reflects the most undefined and abstract form of our soul.

So friends, Jhamtse Gatsal Children’s Community is flowing with the colors of beautiful traditional art on the walls of school classes. Pempa, the artist who worked on our Taj Mahal (aka Children’s Bathhouse), is back–this time to brighten up our classrooms. Let me share something about Pempa with all of you. Pempa is a very dedicated Tibetan artist with a very good understanding of traditional art and with a flair of mixing modern Tibetan art forms, especially from Southeast Asia, to create unique designs. His work has taken him all over India to work at monasteries and gompas (Tibetan temples), and he has always gladly accepted work at Gatsal because he finds working here just as rewarding and meaningful.

His work is such an inspiration for the children and they love to spend time with him and observing him as he works. Sometimes they also assist him. It pleases me immensely when I see a reflection of their time with Pempa in their own creations. Many students have also expressed a desire to learn Tibetan art, which would be the best way to preserve this traditional art form.

Pempa started painting the classroom walls in the last week of October. By the time of our Annual Day Celebration, he had finished one classroom, which our chief guests were very happy to see. They appreciated the idea of traditional paintings on the walls so our children could feel connected to their roots, culture and art.

All the classrooms are painted now and the brightened atmosphere is as much a pleasure for us to teach in as for the children to learn! Thank you, Pempa, for the wonderful creations that come alive with your hands, but are a reflection of your mind and soul.

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Michelle D., a visitor to Gatsal during the Fall of 2011, has a gallery of wonderful photos to share. Here are just a few of her favorites from the trip:

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This year, during the months of my visit to Jhamtse Gatsal, there was no PE teacher, so I took over and taught all the classes. This was making the kids so happy, and was a good opportunity to stay out of the classroom, as well as to learn some team work, movements and fair play. Some of this learning was not really necessary…the Gatsal kids are soooo good at team work, very nice together and such fair players. I was surprised (here in the West it’s not natural). Before, I taught only the KG kids, so when I started teaching the big Jhamtse kids, it was a wonderful experience to see what good players they all are. Some of them are so comical too! And it was the same with my  yoga lessons: fun, fun, fun! And please don’t forget, the students were only allowed to speak ENGLISH!!

At that time I was teaching PE, yoga and different ball games, one of the ball games, especially, was the HIT with the kids. My daughter, Dina, had given me the idea (via Skype) for a very good rules for a super good ball game. The Gatsal kids were just  crazy about it, and they asked me to play it every day!! Sometimes, the adults also played with them; especially talented were Ngawang and Tenzin Yangkey (the music teacher). Good times!

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A photo of Jerry Zadow (Jhamtse treasurer) and many members of the Jhamtse Gatsal Children’s Community, was recently published in the Concord Journal, a newspaper in Concord, Massachusetts. Pretty cool.

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Here’s the Answer!

Painting (A) of the Tawang monastery was done by the boys of class 7! (Sangey Tsering, Dorjee Norbu, and Rinchen Tsering)
Painting (B) is by the girls! (Rinchen Lhamu, Phurpa Yangzom, and Tsering Wangmu A)

It’s so excellent, what the kids did, that I also proposed to Lobsang that we frame the two monastery paintings to hang them in the office or maybe in the guest house! I am so happy about all this incredible art talent; teaching here is just a pleasure. The creativity of the Gatsal kids is amazing! I am quite sure that our western society should try to learn from this “simple” life that Jhamtse Gatsal kids are living.

I also have had the opportunity to see class 7 also doing extra work, like cutting stones for our extended school entry; or washing walls and painting windows and doors and classrooms! Here is the best “life” school. I agree totally with Lobsang that these kids will one day go out into the world with so much practical knowledge.

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It was the morning of November 23, when the school was in normal session, and we got two items of bad news for the Jhamtse Gatsal Children’s Community. Unfortunately, it was the news of two deaths. We lost the grandfather of our very esteemed and devoted teacher Ms. Gombu Lhamu, who had been battling kidney failure for seven years; and one of our very old supporters, Mr. David Prifti, who had a great attachment to our community. David Sir had been valiantly fighting cancer for a long time. It was a painful shock to receive both the bad news on the same morning. We stopped classes to honor the departed souls. Some of staff members left for Tawang with Gombu Lhamu to support her and her family in their loss and the rest of us and children started prayers for the peaceful passage of the souls.

Holy prayers were continued until the next day with traditional butter lamps and Monlam chanting. All of us at the community stand beside the families in their moments of grief and pray that they will find the strength to bear the loss.

In the last few months, our community has faced the pain of losing loving family members and dear supporters. We are supporting each other to overcome this pain and sadness, and we keep all beings struggling with the pain of losing loved ones in our thoughts and prayers. We ask the same of all our blog readers too.

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Children’s Day was celebrated at Jhamtse Gatsal Children’s Community in an amazing style! As you may know, we celebrate Children’s Day in India on 14th November, the birthday of our first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Pt. Nehru was very fond of children and, when he was alive, he always spent his birthday with children from all over the country. Pt. Nehru also did some genuine work for the welfare of Indian children and was always concerned about children’s issues. So since his death in 1964, his birthday, 14th November, is celebrated as Children’s Day every year.

So, we celebrated the day with lots of fun and entertainment for the children. On the evening of the day before, 13th November, a big children’s party was organized. After dinner at 7 pm, all the children and staff got together in the school ground for the party. There was a special bonfire arranged there, as it was a very cold evening and very soon everybody felt warmed. In fact a little rain started but nobody was in mood to move indoors…so rain moved on! The children were so excited that they were screaming as they sang (kind of like the Diwali pooja, for those who attended that) and nobody stopped them because it was after all their time.

Then, the music was ready and the dance party started…all the children and staff hit the dance floor with their funny and wild dance steps…but who cared…everybody was busy dancing and having fun. Some snacks and juice were served at the party.

It was an amazing moment of my life to be a part of a party like this! In fact this party was a symbol of the beautiful relationship that goes beyond the student-teacher relationship, closer to the deep essence of love and joy of our pure soul…

The next day, on 14th November, everybody wished each other Happy Children’s Day. We had a short programme, which started at 10 am in the morning. Everybody gathered in the big prayer hall. We decided to celebrate it in a different style. We announced to the children that since it was their day, all the staff members were their to respond to their  wishes and demands, and demand they did…in their clear, loud voices! Some were asked to dance, others to sing and no one was spared! In the middle of the programme, the traditional, delicious sweet rice recipe of bresi was served. Three children – Pema Drolma, Tashi Drolma and Raju did a poetry recitation also. We were having so much fun that 2 hours and 30 minutes went by like a moment and we had to stop the party in between because it was the lunch time.

All in all, it was a great day with moments full of joy and happiness. We wish that the memory of it remains in the air of our lovely Jhamtse Gatsal Children’s Community…until we can do it again!

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Many supporters of Jhamtse Gatsal will be happy to hear about the recent additions to the Jhamtse Gatsal staff and skill set. We now have a very skilled carpenter on staff who has been working on creating some beautiful and high quality wood furniture for our classrooms and kitchen. Please see some examples of his handiwork here. He has also accepted to take on our older children as apprentices and teach them the trade.

During the summer, the community also acquired a stone cutting tool, which Ngawang (campus manager) and Dorjee Lama (driver) have been putting to skillful use to cut stone for paving the area in front of our academic blocks. During their free time the older children apprenticed under Ngawang and Dorjee Lama and later helped lay the foundation and the stone to create this wonderful pavement. Thanks to the help of the staff and children of Jhamtse Gatsal, this paving was accomplished in mere seven days! Who says Rome can’t be built in seven days? When hearts, minds and muscles come together, anything is possible!

In closing, I’d just like to say that starting next academic session, we will be offering carpentry and stone cutting and paving as experiential learning opportunities in our academic calendar!

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The children at Jhamtse Gatsal have always been involved in all projects at the Children’s Community, whether building — assisting in the new bathhouse construction, helping the driver with car repair, painting, and doing all the tasks necessary in the community such as kitchen and cleaning duties. These are all things that members of families would naturally do in the Monpa culture. But now Jhamtse Gatsal hopes to make experiential education in skills that are necessary for the surrounding region and as potential means for preparing our children for productive lives in the community, particularly for those who don’t go on to post-secondary education.

A first big step in Experiential Education (EE) was taken last week: the carpenter at Jhamtse Gatsal, one of the best in the region, was given an offer and has agreed to come on staff. He said that he could not imagine the honor to be part of such a community. He will be working at Gatsal and teaching the children basic carpentry skills. He is really quite amazing. Everything done with hand tools – planes, chisels, saws etc., things that many of us would look to do with a bandsaw, lathe, planer, table saw, etc. His work is really quite wonderful. He (and potentially his helper, also an accomplished mason) will be a critical addition to the community as we prepare for construction projects in the near future. Hard to imagine, but quality carpentry is a very rare and much sought skill in the region. The carpenter has a family and his young daughter will probably come to the school next year. He comes from the same village as amala Tenzin. There will be lots of building and improvements here, and what he has done so far impresses greatly because it is quite superior to the other such work in the area.

Other near-term Experiential Education initiatives are organic and drip irrigation projects, to increase yield and quality of fresh vegetable and fruit for the table; a chicken house and yard with 40-60 chickens, sufficient to add much needed protein with eggs every other day to the children’s diets. We are also researching the possibility of acquiring 4-6 good milking cows from Bhutan.  This is slightly more complex than the chicken project because it will require a good herdsman with knowledge of caring for and maintaining dairy cattle (a cut above the cows that wander freely about the property today, and requiring more care and attention).

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November 5, 2011, was a day to remember in the young history of Jhamtse Gatsal Children’s Community! It was the day we celebrated our 5^th Annual Day to commemorate our five years of achievements and accomplishments. They have been wonderful years but they have not been easy years. It is only thanks to the support of generous donors, volunteers and wellwishers like you, our very dedicated staff and board members here and in the US and the untiring guidance of Venerable Lobsang that this has been possible. In this short span of time, we have

• changed the lives of 81 children as much as they have changed ours
• installed primary and subsidiary solar photovoltaic systems that provide 100% power backup to the academic blocks, clinic and the family houses
• constructed a high-class bath house for our children—the best to be found in the region as rightly said by the Chief Guest of the occasion (but more about that later)
• provided campus-wide wireless connectivity
• installed a very high-efficiency smokeless wood-fired cooking stove in the kitchen and a water heating system for the bathhouse
• installed solar electric fencing on a central garden to keep cattle from destroying our kitchen crops
• implemented environmentally friendly waste recycling programs, separating food waste, glass, plastic, metal, compost for the gardens and paper and cardboard, which we hope will be copied in the surrounding towns and villages to keep the environment clean
• installed properly designed septic waste systems in all of our bathroom facilities to ensure that the waste does not pollute the water or environment
• taught and continue to practice the lessons of cleanliness, hand washing, water purification through boiling, and proper nutrition as a means of maintaining health

However, this is just the beginning! We have a long way to go and some of our projects in the pipeline are

• exploring new generation wind power systems to supplement the solar power and achieve “always-on” community power
• installing drip irrigation systems for this and future gardens (water is a principle scarce critical resource)
• becoming a demonstration garden to improve output in our garden and the gardens in the surrounding villages, including year-round vegetables, fruit trees
• putting in a henhouse for 50 – 60 chickens, sufficient to provide children and staff with one egg every other day to improve the necessary protein intake for developing bodies and minds [1]
• exploring bringing in a herd of about 4 good milking cows to further improve the children’s dietary protein requirements [2]
• installing rainwater harvesting drainage and capture water tanks for use in gardens and other purposes

• supplementing our children’s academic education with multiple experiential education programs to broaden their learning and to ensure that those of our children who do not continue on to post-secondary education will be able to live positive, productive lives and continue our work
• becoming a model community to help eliminate poverty, to ensure cultural preservation and Monpa traditions and to sow the seeds of love and compassion as broadly as possible

This is the list of our past achievements and future aspirations as shared with the Honorable Chief Guest, Mr. Kemo Lollen, the District Commissioner of Tawang, the Guest of Honor, Mr. S.N. Mosobi, the Superintendent of Police, our dear parents, friends and children and staff of Jhamtse Gatsal Children’s Community. The District Commissioner and the Superintendent of Police were so amazed by our successes of the last few years and by the quality of education and life provided to the children that they said “had they been given such a chance in their life when they were young, who knew where they would be today!” Our family style kitchen and dining area so warmed their hearts that they requested their meal with us to be much like we ate every day. Hearing such praise warmed our hearts too and we gladly accepted them as the newest members of our Jhamtse family.

After a tour of the community, the guests were treated to traditional performances by the children, which ranged from Tibetan and Monpa songs and dances and the grand finale performance of a Snow Lion Dance! This dance was worth every minute of wait because the performers outdid themselves with the headgear, costumes and balancing acts!

Today we stand proud with the difference we are making, albeit in a smalll way, but the acknowledgment and acceptance by the highest administrative officials of the region to grace our celebration is a sign that with a kind heart, an intelligent mind and a healthy body—the three pillars of Jhamtse Gatsal Children’s Community—even the most difficult challenge can be overcome. Today we have created a model that the region can proudly show as their accomplishment as well!

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[1] Study on protein requirements in Arunachal Pradesh and at Jhamtse Gatsal, University of Washington, Graduate School in Public Health, Grant Proposal, Jiasong Yuen

[2] Ibid.

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About Our Community
Jhamtse Gatsal, Tibetan for “Garden of Love and Compassion”, is a children’s community located in the Indian foothills of the Himalayas. Opened in 2006, it is currently school and home for 75 children from disadvantaged family situations in the nearby villages. Read More...



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