Volunteer Ladakh

Collaboration

If you’d like to assist Ladakh communities, but are unable to volunteer in person,
please consider one of the following ways to become involved.

1) Bring Ladakh into Your Classroom

- dialogue with Ladakhi students through writings, pictures, and
correspondence

- have your classroom or your child’s classroom do fundraising
activities for schools in Ladakh, for building libraries, or other
projects of your choice (see below)

- spread the word to other teachers, grads and undergrads,
potential volunteers

- adopt a school

2) Sponsor a Student

Many parents do not have the financial resources to pay for their child’s education, notebooks or pencils, a backpack, or clothing. Many Ladakhis themselves sponsor other Ladakhi children when financially possible, so children have access to education.

You may sponsor a child for an entire year by providing any of the following:

- $350 for a student's admission fee

- $250 for transportation, books, and additional

school fees

- $1000 for Full Scholarship (includes residential/

boarding school room and board, medicine,

admission fee and additional school fees)

3) Fundraising/Donations

There are many fundraising activities that one might consider, which not only raise needed funds for educational and environmental projects, but also brings a global awareness to the life and culture of Ladakh, a simple and sustainable way of living. Church groups, classrooms, sanghas, book groups, teams, etc. all have access to many other compassionate people who want to contribute. Likewise, if you wish to simply make a personal donation, this can go far towards reaching our goals and is extremely valuable.

We know that few people are able to travel to this remote part of the world and commit a minimum of two months volunteer service, and understandably so. There are other ways you can become involved and support the educational and environmental efforts in Ladakh, and we are always interested in your ideas as well. By working together, your contributions will make significant and lasting results.

Projects Needing Your Support

Here are some of the many projects that you or your community fundraising efforts can support:

- provide school libraries in every school in Ladakh

- purchase art supplies so students may write and
illustrate books in their native language, referencing the local culture

- provide basic tools for making mane stones (stone carvings of the sacred Tibetan
texts) – this tradition is slowly dying

- help to publish bilingual Ladakhi student authored stories to disperse to other local
schools, to affirm the life and values of the Ladakhi people

- provide basic sports equipment (for volleyball, soccer, ice hockey – a major winter
sport in Ladakh, archery – a traditional Ladakhi sport)

- provide bundles of 100 saplings to be planted locally by students

- provide basic carpentry hand tools for students to learn the traditional intricate carving
techniques of Ladakhi carpenters

- provide a solar hot water heater for each residential (monastic or otherwise) school (so
students can take warm bucket baths)

- build winter greenhouses at each residential or monastery school to increase access
to vegetables and improve nutrition

- build nurseries to grow trees from seed

If you have other ideas of how you might become a part of our ongoing efforts, email us or use the Contact Form. We are always looking for new ways to connect and help.

info@volunteerladakh.org

All Volunteer Ladakh donations are used exclusively for projects.

Did you know that classrooms in Ladakh generally consist of a bare room with a rug on the floor, and a white board against the wall? No books, maps, posters, visual aids, no art classes or supplies, musical instruments, or sports equipment are presently available. Students and teachers sit on the floor. Students generally will have one notebook and one pencil. If lucky, a school might have a ball for playing volleyball or soccer. So, anything beyond these bare essentials must come from donors, like you. If there is something you would like to donate or assist in making available to the children of Ladakh, please contact us!

Did you know that Ladakh is

inaccessible most of the year by road? Two roads enter Ladakh, one from the west and one from the south. Both of these roads are closed nine months of the year, as they must cross the high mountain passes of the Himalayas. This means, that from September through the following June, the Ladakhi people are completely dependent upon what they have produced and stored during the short, high-altitude growing season. There are no trucks coming into the region with supplies for local stores. During the long winter months when roads over the passes are snowed in and closed, what little moves into or out of Ladakh is only by air.

Recent Projects

Library Projects - Volunteer Ladakh is committed to insuring that every school, public, private, or monastic has a library. While several local and wonderful NGO’s have been incredibly successful in their efforts, there are still many schools without access to books. Together, with their help and yours, it is happening, one school at a time.

These are the results of our most recent projects.

Likir Monastery School Library –

August 2013

Our first books, may not look like much, but we feel rich..

Twenty-six young monks in Liker who a short time ago had no books, now enjoy a multi-lingual library in Ladakhi, English, Hindi, and Tibetan, the four languages taught in the monastic schools. We thank the Avalokitesvara Foundation of Leh and our many international friends for making these educational improvements possible. Students were taught how to care for the books, organize them, and even taught how to turn pages. Students take turns being librarians and teach the younger ones the same responsibilities. We also provided wall posters (names and pictures of animals, plants, landscapes terms, etc. in English, Ladakhi, Hindi, and Tibetan), a world map, and school supplies such as crayons, colored pencils and paper. For recreation, we purchased a simple piece of rope and a plastic ball. The rope, strung between two poles served as volleyball net. After five hours of endless play for happy monk teachers and their students, the plastic ball popped! And so it goes…