Environmental Leadership Workshop To Mark TEAM's 4th Anniversary

June 8, 2009: Tesi Environmental Awareness Movement marked its fourth founding anniversary with forty-six Eco-Club members and Home Mothers of Gopalpur Tibetan Children's Village School in a four-day environmental leadership-training workshop. On World Environment Day, TEAM offered the Club with a seed-fund of Rs. 5000 and honoured Tsering Tharchin— a 12th grade student, who was TEAM’s member since 2005— with Tesi Environmental Service Award for his service and love for Nature.

The workshop, 4-7 June 2009, included talks, slide shows, movies, fieldtrips, activities, and discussions covering topics such as Healthy Living and Environment, Buddhism and Ecology, Tibet’s Current Environmental Reality, Waste Management and Biodiversity Conservation. The resource persons included Geshe Lharampa Rinchen Ngodup, a senior professor at Dolma Ling Nunnery; Mrs. Tenzin Pelmo, a teacher at Upper TCV (recipient of 2008 TESA); Mr. Tenzin Norbu, the Head of the Environment and Development Desk of the Central Tibetan Administration, and all four TEAM staff.

All the students took the workshop seriously and participated very actively throughout the sessions. In their evaluation forms, they wrote positively about the workshop and all of them were willing to take roles as leaders in promoting environmental awareness in their community. One participant, in his/her evaluation form, wrote, “Through this wonderful workshop, I had learned a lot, specially how we human beings destroy the environment in order to fulfil our own wishes. This workshop definitely made a difference in my attitude towards our environment. I would like to make a commitment that I will be an environmental activist and work hard to make our Earth a better place.”

The participants were not only introduced to the above issues, but were divided into five groups to brainstorm on suggestions and discuss on how they can take leadership roles locally in environmental protection. Narrowing down from more than one hundred ideas, they have finally come up with the following 8 goals to improve the local environmental situation:

To revive the traditional Tibetan culture of bringing ones own platters to any food-serving functions or ceremonies
To decorate school compounds with placards and metal boards with beautiful sayings on environment
To invite resource persons to speak on environmental issues to the entire Gopur TCV population
To request the school administration to inform the school tuck-shop to have less junk food and more healthy snacks including fruit and unwrapped snacks
To screen environmental related documentaries/movies to the school community
To request the organizing committee of the Graduation Party not to buy and serve food in Styrofoam platters
To request the School Administration to inform the school canteen to stop serving in use-and-throw plastic cups and bowls.
To partner with Gen Tenzin Pelmo when she comes to the school to promote environmental awareness in the Gopalpur community.

TEAM’s Research Officer, Karma S. Dhargyal said, “This workshop is particularly successful as the participants chalked-out their needs and discussed in detail in making their school a healthy place. Most of them took vows to lead by setting good examples such as picking-up after themselves, not to consume fizzy drinks and junk foods, and to act strongly in raising environmental consciousness of the community”.

Another staff member, Tsering Dhondup said, “After seeing such positive evaluations of the participants, I felt that we have achieved our workshop expectations. However, some of them mentioned that the four-day was too short. In future we should also need to take workshop duration into consideration, provided that we have enough finance.”

TEAM is a non-profit environmental organization with a mission to revive the ecological consciousness of the Tibetan people.

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