UPDATE ON PANGI SCHOOL PROJECT – SPRING 2005

Pangi is a very poor rural village of approx 80 people, hours from decent dirt roads with its people living at subsistence level and in extremely difficult conditions. Despite their difficult and basic way of life, the people there and from neighbouring villages were very friendly, generous and thankful for the future prospect of having education for their children.

The school in Pangi was planned not only serve the children of Pangi village but also the two other nearest villages called ‘Perse’ and ‘Palong’ and altogether there will be 36 children that attend when the school first opens. The building of the school commenced in Autumn 2004, so they could use all their available land for crops in the summer growing season. The work that was carried out during the Autumn was primarily to do with clearing/preparing the ground and laying the foundations. Due to the harsh weather on the Tibetan plateau over the winter, works were stopped again but re-commenced in spring 2005.

UPDATE

When Russell Brice, the owner of Himex, visited the site in Spring 2005, it became apparent that the planned opening of the school later that year would be delayed due to hitting some bureaucratic hurdles with the Chinese authorities. Karsang from Tashidum village and Chuldim from Pangi village (who both work for Himex during expedition seasons), along with Russell attempted to reason with the Chinese authorities that to have a school in this incredibly remote location could only benefit the local children and population as a whole.  Sadly, despite initial approval, the Chinese didn’t want to allow the Tibetans to continue with construction of this school but conceded that the materials that had been already bought could be transferred into extending the pre-existing school in the village of Tashidum.   So, although this wasn’t the intended outcome for the school project in Pangi, at least local Tibetan children will still benefit from it, albeit in another village.

This project has demonstrated the very real difficulties that the Tibetans still face when trying to improve themselves, without necessarily being totally controlled by the Chinese. In short – although these Tibetans live in an environment which is unbelievably harsh and isolated from any of the Chinese population that are currently flooding its capital (Lhasa) and main towns – the Chinese still insist on exerting an unreasonable level of pointless and sometimes detrimental control.

Thankfully, the fund raising has not been to no avail and the money is still supporting the education of children in the wild, remote and windswept Rongbuk region of Tibet. So, once again thank you so much for donating to the Tibet school project. We will continue to update this site as we hear more about the school/any change in the ruling by the Chinese Authorities.

CONTINUING SUPPORT FOR TIBET’S CHILDREN

The existing school in Tashidum, which currently holds about 40 pupils, is always in need of materials (anything from writing paper and pens to footballs etc) and if you were interested in supporting them, please email us and we can let you know how to offer support.