Tibet Relief Fund – Sherab Gatset Lobling School & Trek-Aid, India & Nepal

Tibetans had long been denied access to education and employment opportunities in their own country. Speaking out resulted in arrest, torture and imprisonment. Resultantly, thousands of Tibetans crossed the border into India each year during the 1990s. The winter of 1999 was exceptionally cold in Tibet. Many refugees took advantage of the cold weather conditions, hampering Chinese border guards, to cross the Himalayas into India. The Tibet Relief Fund worked with these newly arrived refugees.

One of the Tibet Relief Fund's projects was the establishment of the Sherab Gatset Lobling School, which aimed to prepare new refugees to compete on the Indian job market. The curriculum emphasised Tibetan language, culture and history, and English, whilst supplementary topics included vocational skills such as carpentry, plumbing and masonry. The school provided a vital resource for Tibetans who arrived in India in a state of total physical and mental devastation. Another project, run jointly by the Tibet Relief Fund and Trek-Aid, arranged for skilled volunteers (mainly doctors, health workers, teachers, architects and builders) to take short-term placements in four Tibetan settlements in the Pokhara area of Nepal. These volunteers worked together with refugees on projects ranging from training, health education and environmental protection to cultural preservation and caring for the elderly.

TRAID donated £32,242 to the Tibet Relief Fund to renovate the kitchen of the Sherab Gatset Lobling School, which was in a heavy state of disrepair due to frequent floods caused by heavy monsoon rains. Money was also deployed in three separate camps in Nepal to improve basic water supply, provide locally made benches and desks for a school hostel, curtail chronic damp in a community health clinic and provide nutrition grants and clothing for the elderly.

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