Helping Moe Village School

Moe village is in a remote area of Dolpo, it is smaller and slightly warmer than Komang and they have some plants there. They are around seventeen households. They have a small monastery on the side of the village with one or two monks. The Tibetan border is just one hour's walk from this village.

The main occupation of the villagers is farming and raising animals. They also grow long and short radish (white color) and made some business selling them in all upper Dolpo.

Moe village is one of the villages that don’t have a government school. It is under the administrative ward division supervised by Jigme Choeying Norbu Lama who is from Komang. He asked Rinpoche for help for their village children and Rinpoche kindly has been sharing stationery with them.

For the last 3-4 years a monk disciple of Rinpoche who can read and teach English and Nepali alphabet was teaching the children there requested by Rinpoche. There are around 8-9 children only.

Last year the monk-teacher got very sick and the children couldn’t study anymore so we decided to send one teacher from Komang school to help them, she is teaching there now.

To support the children and the teacher is necessary around 3.000 euros per year. With this money, we can pay the teacher’s salary and food, school uniform, books, some sports equipment, and transport. Food is quite expensive there, the villagers provide potatoes but we need to buy rice, wheat flour, etc.

We would very much appreciate any help

you can provide so these children

can have an education

Thank you so much from our heart!

Himalayan Career and Dharma University

Komang Rinpoche has a dream in this lifetime...

“Create a university where monastic and lay people can study together receiving modern and traditional dharma education”.

Rinpoche has been thinking about this project for a long time. For many years he has seen again and again all the problems that monks and nuns are facing everywhere. Because their parents send them to a monastery when they are very small if they decide to leave when they are bigger they don’t know what to do with their lives. In the monastery, they only studied Dharma teachings and never got to learn languages or any other skills so when they disrobe they cannot find a job and become very depressed or ended up doing wrong things.

Rinpoche believes that when someone decides to leave the monastic life, they should find a place where they can study different things. Similarly, they should be able to continue with their Dharma studies and practice while learning these new skills and not totally abandon or forget all the precious teachings and training they received in the monastery.

As for the lay people, it will be very beneficial to have a place where they can really get to understand and practice Dharma so they can develop kindness, compassion, and human values while studying different subjects and professions.

In this University-school, lay people and monastics could study modern education subjects like science, mathematics, social studies, accounts, etc. At the same time, they could receive a real Dharma education. It would be a place where everyone could become a school teacher, an accountant, a dharma teacher, etc while they learn how to cultivate and develop a strong practice of compassion, kindness, patience, and so on.

The dream of Rinpoche is to include everybody, lay and monastic, in one university and give all of them the same opportunities with general subjects and Dharma studies. He wants to promote modern education and preserve traditional Buddhist education together. He wants to give access to modern education to monastics and real traditional Dharma education to lay people. This will help many young lay and monastics to have a future where they can earn an honest livelihood and become compassionate human beings bringing benefit, love, and help to our society.

If you resonate with this vision

and want to contribute with ideas, work,

or sponsoring this beautiful project...

please contact us

info@hdkharak.org

Komang Village Handicraft Project

In 2015 with the help of the Spanish NGO CIDEN we created the handicraft project with the aim of making the HKH project more self-sustainable.

We bought some sheep for the wool and hired a shepherd for taking care of the sheep. Every year, the women of Komang make a number of blankets with sheep and yak wool and some handcrafted bags that we bring to Kathmandu for selling. The name of this blanket is Yak blanket, it is very warm and beautiful. This is made with a pure yak-wool and a little bit of sheep.

Advantages of this blanket

Great warmness, there is a feeling of nature, it said to have bone-healing properties and to be good for blood circulation. It can be used in different ways; as a blanket, shawl, carpet, etc.

This beautiful handmade project is not working so well mainly because blankets are a bit costly, quite heavy, and a little bit rough; but they are the traditional blanket that people from Upper Dolpo have always used since ancient times.

How do we make a blanket in Komang village?

At the end of winter, women shear the sheep and yaks. Then they clean the wool and start making thread manually with the wool. After making a lot of thread, they do small balls of wool and begin to dye them with natural colors. They have to repeat the coloring process several times to fix the color to the wool and it takes a long time because it dries in the sun.

When wool is finally ready, women start making pieces of blanket and then they sew the different patches in many different, traditional beautiful designs.

The whole process of making a blanket (making thread, coloring, weaving, cleaning, and sewing) can take around 14 days.

The initial idea for developing the handicraft project was to support economically the HKH project (Secondary school in Kathmandu). But as profits with this project are so low, finally we have decided to dedicate the profit to helping old people in Komang village.

A blanket price varies between 62-102 USD depending on size and quality. Yak wool is softer, and so is more expensive. The bag's prices are between 23-40 USD.

We are developing more traditional craft designs and hope that we can share them with all of you in the future!

Komang Village Clinic

A clinic or small hospital is one of the things most urgently needed in a remote village such as ours. When people get sick in Komang they are not able to get treatment quickly like in a city. We have herbal Ayurvedic treatments, which are done by local Amchi (Tibetan medicine doctors) but it takes time to cure. These treatments are very different from painkillers, or operations involving cutting and sewing wounds. Similarly, many people face serious problems when giving birth, kidney stones, accidents, etc.

Because of all these, Rinpoche had planned to build a small clinic for a long time. He is one of the great Amchi (Tibetan Medicine Doctor) in the region, so he knows very well about the major difficulties people are facing. Unfortunately due to the lack of funds, he was not able to build a proper clinic. Instead, he has been using one of the rooms of the new monastery as a provisional clinic where he can receive patients and give medicine.

The long campaign for a hospital

Jigme, the elder son of Rinpoche, was also well aware of this precarious situation for a long time, so when he became chairman of our ward, he immediately began requesting the government for help to build a clinic or small hospital in the village. After many years of campaigning trying and requesting, thanks to the help of some heads of local municipalities and chairmen of other wards, we could finally receive the fruits of our efforts and prayers. The permission to build a hospital in the village was finally granted and the works began in May 2022.

This is great news for the village and many villages near Komang. Rinpoche and all the people of Komang are very happy and we all hope our situation will soon improve. However, being a such remote village, we know that in the near future we are going to need a lot of help to acquire and maintain the necessary resources to keep our hospital working in a proper way.

The accident of little Jigme in 2016

A hospital is urgently needed in Komang so cases like little Jigme's will never happen again. In 2016 he fell from the roof of his house and badly broke his arm. As there was no hospital or health center nearby able to splint his arm, he had to go with his father all the way to Kathmandu. It took them 10 days to reach Kathmandu enduring terrible pain and hardships. By the time they reach the hospital the poor boy's arm had become gangrenous and his arm had to be amputated.

Similar cases to this one and with more fatal consequences happen all the time in the Upper Dolpo. A hospital will save many lives and would greatly improve this dire situation.