26 Apr: Ms. Caroline Laurent and Mr. Patrick Robert, Journalists from the ELLE Magazine, Weekly Women's Magazine from France visited the Tibetan Children's Village on the 24 April 2008.
The purpose of their visit was to write an article about the Tibetan Youth in Exile in India. They filmed on the life of children right since the morning and interviewed some of our students as well as the President of TCV.
26 Apr:Joint Project on "Prince Sidhartha"by the Telluride Academy Theatre Group, Colorado (USA) and TCV School Dharamsala
(6-19 Apr 2008)
In November of 2007, Wendy Brooks, Founding Director of the Telluride Academy, traveled to TCV where she met with the heads of TCV and discussed about student visitation from her theater group. Subsequently, TCV sent an invitation to the Theater group for its visit from 6-19 April 2008, to allow the American students to live in Children’s Homes to share different experiences and culture among the children.
Telluride Academy is a 28-year-old private summer enrichment school in Colorado USA which has 800 students from across the USA. The Academy offers 100 different classes each summer to students age 5-17. Select graduates of the Academy's theater program are invited on the Academy's oldest and most successful global travel program, which occurs in April of each year. The Academy believes that the future of world peace depends on our young people. Young teenagers can be powerful global ambassadors and we’ve found that theater is an appropriate vehicle for exploring common interests, skills and building friendships among teenagers: every country has its dance, song, theater and visual arts! This is the 14th spring trip for the Telluride Academy theater program. They have visited sponsoring schools and performed with students in Slovakia, Costa Rica, Ireland, Brazil, Mexico, New Zealand, Guatemala, Indonesia, Turkey, Bahamas, Viet Nam and now India.
Why India and why TCV? With the recommendation from Geshe Phuntsok and in order to have a serious dialogue about creating a more peaceful world; it is the job of our children to do what we have been struggling to do for so many years. The play Siddhartha provides an opportunity to advance this work.
So in Dharamshala, like every other program, 16 children from TCV were selected to perform the “Prince Sidhartha” along with the 16 children from the Telluride Academy under the guidance of Ms. Wendy and her 6 staff along with several TCV staff. The two groups of students collaborated in creating a bi-lingual performance of their theatrical performance so that local people can have better understanding of the play. It is understood that by doing such shows, these students become more open-minded and gains immense of self confidence and moral boost and even become deeply committed to international studies and travel and to community services.
Together they learnt the play over 14 days and displayed the life of “Prince Sidhartha” or “Gautam Budha” for the children and staff of TCV School Dharamsala Cantt. on 18 April 2008. The show was absolutely fantastic, humorous and at the same time very creative. “The play has potentially brought out very clear-cut message for the public and there’s lot of things to learn from their performance”, says Mr. Tenzin Sangpo, Education Director and Chief Guest of the evening. He also thanked all the delegates from Telluride Academy as well the contributing members from the TCV for their wonderful performance which is the blend of class, character, immense skill and righteous message.
The Telluride Academy delegation to TCV consists of 16 students and 7 staff including Project Director Wendy Brooks, Lead Artists Sally DAvis, Kim Epifano and Mike Stasiuk, Visiting Guest Artist Emily Klion (Director of the Marsh Children's Theater San Francisco and co-author of the play Siddhartha-The Bright Path) Telluride Academy instructor Jeremy Baron and Program Director Luke Brown.
25 Apr:Inter-Tibetan School's Principal Exchange
Under the guidance and leadership of Deptt. of Education, CTA, Dharamshala has organized a 4 day Principal Exchange Programme in various Tibetan Schools across the India so that each of them can see, hear and learn from each other by sharing their experiences in Institutional Management, School Development and Teaching-Learning Processes. During their visit, they will observe various infrastructures like classrooms, homes and hostels, attend classes talk and share information with teachers as well as the students. They will also be touring the tourists sites around the particular school like the Tsuklagkhang, Norbulingka and Mcleod Ganj market in case of Dharamshala. The schedule for the visits was from 8- 25 April 2008.
Some of the visiting School Principals were Mr. K.T Bhutia of CST Kalimpong visits TCV School Dharamshala, Mrs. T.D Changra of CST Bylakuppe and Mr. I.S Thakur, CST Dalhousie visits SOS TCV Gopalpur, Mr. Dhondup Tsering of SOS TCV Bylakuppe visits CST Bylakuppe, Mr.R.N Tiwari of CST Gurupura visits TCV Selaqui, Mr. Choeying Dhondup of TCV Lower Dharamshala visits STS Bhuntar, Mr. Namdol Tashi of TCV Chauntra visits CST Mundgod, Mr. R.K Shrivastava of CST Sonada visits TCV Chantra, Mr. Sonam Sichoe of SOS TCV Suja visits CST Darjeeling, Dr. A.K Gupta of CST Herbertpur visits SOS TCV Bylakuppe, Mr. Phuntsok Tashi of TCV Gopalpur visits CST Mussoorie, Mr. Duke Tsering of TCV Selaqui visits CST Sonada, Mrs. Sonam Dolkar of TCV Dharamshala visits CST Paonta, Mr. C Raveendran, CST Mundgod visits TCV Upper Dharamsala, Mr. Tashi Dhondup of CST Darjeeling visits SOS TCV Suja, Mr. Jampa Tenzin of CST Shimla visits TCV Upper Dharamsala, Mr. S.P Sharma of CST Dholanji visits Lower TCV and Mr. Ramesh Chandra of CST CVP Bylakuppe visits SOS TCV Suja.
8 Apr:World Health Day Observed
On the 7 April 2008, the World Health Day was observed by the Tibetan Children's Village, Dharamsala Cantt. Several programmes and activities were organized by the TCV Health Committee during the day.
The day was started with a short talk and presentation on "Common Cold" by teachers in the morning assembly and this was followed by "Drawing Competition" for the Infant and Junior School students on the subject "Health & Hygiene".
In the afternoon, there was a class wise area cleaning and home wise tank cleaning program and this was followed by the screening of the super hit Hindi movie "Taare Zameen Par"-the story of a dyslexic child for the students of class VIII and above and staff members at the Hermann Gmeiner Hall.
4 Apr:TCV Career Counselors Meet on 4 April 2008
Dr. V. Rajentran, Erode (T.N) approached Mr. Thupten Dorjee la for a presentation on the courses run by K S R Group of Institute for the information of TCV. This information being relevant to our Counselors for providing diverse choice of institution to students when they go to seek admissions after the +2. In view of that, the counselors from the nearby TCV schools were invited so as to make optimum use of the precious time, a rare joint session with the President and Education Director as well as the Scholarship Program Officer followed by sharing of information with the Head of Sponsorship.
The meet was participated by Ms. Choenzom Tsering, Counselor, TCV, Upper Dharamsala, Mr. Kalsang Tsewang, Counselor, TCV, Selaqui, Mr. Tenzin Lektsok, Counselor, TCV, Lower Dharamsala and Miss Sonam Palmo, Counselor, TCV, Chauntra.
Mr. Thupten Dorjee gave out an introductory note on background of this meet followed by President's speech motivating our counselors its best practices and also through them sensitizing the students in appreciating the value of scholarships both in terms of academics and skill development. The Education Director opened the floor to the participants to share their concern and problem. The Counselors participated and openly threw lots of constructive feed backs to all the Heads-the President, the Education Director, and the General Secretary.
After the lunch, Mrs. Tashi Lhamo la gave a brief out line of the TCV Sponsorship Program and the role of TCV Scholarship Program Officers as well as Career Counselors in motivating our children in writing expressive letters to their sponsors and avoiding undue demands.
