The Dolpo Alternative Energy Project was launched in the summer of 2001, in Dolpo, Nepal, with funding from individual donations and a grant from the International Foundation. DROKPA staff, along with a crew of local and Kathmandu-based technicians, distributed solar light systems and solar parabolic reflector cookers to twenty monasteries in the Panzang and Tsharka Valleys of Dolpa District - areas that are located outside the Shey Phoksundo National Park. After initial discussions with our local partners, DROKPA decided to focus on delivering lights and cookers first to monasteries. This approach was intended to show proper respect for the religious institutions at the heart of community life in Dolpo. Monasteries and schools are gathering places for community rituals that always involve food and people - what better place to demonstrate the usefulness of energy alternatives like solar cookers and lights! These community temples are also households in which a lay religious leader and his family live and carry forth meditation and artistic traditions. These households are accorded respect in the community, part of the strategy DROKPA and its local partners used to successfully disseminate solar technology in the Panzang and Tsarkha valleys of Dolpo, Nepal. In addition to community temples, schools are a target of DROKPA's Alternative Energy Program. Children who see alternative energy technology at work in schools can learn about solar technologies themselves and help educate older generations.
DROKPA'S Dolpo Community Temple project included an extensive training component for local project managers and individual users. We hired three women and one man from Dolpo to spend one month training in alternative energy technologies at Lotus Energy and the Centre for Rural Technology. These two organizations have helped disseminate energy- and labor- saving tools like solar lights and solar cookers to every district of Nepal. DROKPA provided a month's salary for these training. During the training, our staff learned how to assemble, install, maintain, and repair solar cookers and solar lights.
To promote ownership and sustainability, the lamas from each of the 20 monasteries contributed money to a community trust fund that will cover the costs of repairs and maintenance, and can also be applied toward the purchase of additional alternative energy systems in the future.
Community Temples Project, Dolpo, Nepal
Bringing
light and solar cookers to the community temples of Dolpo...Read
on!
DROKPA’s
most ambitious project to date – The Dolpo Alternative Energy
Program – was launched this summer. We hired three women
and one man from Dolpo to spend a month training in alternative
energy technologies at Lotus
Energy and the Centre
for Rural Technology. These two organizations have helped
disseminate energy- and labor-saving tools like solar lights and
solar cookers to every district of Nepal. DROKPA provided a month's
salary for these trainings. During the training, our staff learned
how to assemble, install, maintain, and repair solar cookers and
solar lights.
Our
local staff was also exposed to a wide range of ideas and technologies
(e.g., fuel-efficient stoves, watermills, briquette stoves, etc.)
and became “guerilla electricians”.
The
team drove by bus to the hills of western Nepal. We
then flew to Dolpo from Surkhet. We were lucky to get through
heavy monsoon clouds in a Russian cargo helicopter, loaded with
a ton of equipment and seven passengers.
It
was really amazing to watch the monasteries light up. These buildings
double as community gathering points and households in Dolpo and
will hopefully encourage village-wide projects.
Using
their training at Lotus Energy and Centre for Rural Technology,
DROKPA’s local staff wired solar light systems and set up
solar cookers in their own communities.
DROKPA
will continue to monitor the project to ensure that lights and
cookers are working during this critical introductory phase.
We
tested a portable solar cooker made by a California firm named
Soltac while we were in Dolpo. The “CookSack” portable
solar cooker weighs only 11 ounces and can, in good conditions,
boil water in an hour. The idea was to see if these portable cookers
could be useful in Dolpo, perhaps for shepherds herding livestock
or to warm water for washing. Locals were positive about the portable
stoves, but agreed that they needed to be larger, to accommodate
the large pots of water needed to make Tibetan tea, for example.
DROKPA
distributed to twenty monasteries this summer will make a new
form of energy - clean and renewable - available to these treeless
communities. Solar cookers will reduce local people's exposure
to smoke thereby reducing respiratory and eye diseases.
We
exited Dolpo via Mustang District. This was an exhausting but
beautiful 3-day marathon over Dolpo's highest pass, and many other,
seemingly innumerable high ridges. It was an instructive journey
in terms of understanding local conditions, though; we returned
to Kathmandu via Jomsom after only 12 days in the field.
At
a board meeting attended by DROKPA executive staff, the Himalayan
Amchi Association discussed the organization's goals and plans
and made initial plans for the amchi conference and workshop in
January 2002. This annual meeting brings together doctors from
Dolpo, Mustang, and other Himalayan communities to train for one
month with a senior doctor from the Chagpori Institute in Dharamsala.
DROKPA gave the HAA a grant of $1000 this year, which was used
to fund the January conference, HAA’s publication series,
and to help the organization set up an office in Kathmandu. More
than eighty amchi from Nepal's northern border regions gathered
in Kathmandu for the Second Annual Conference in January 2002.
For more information on the Himalayan Amchi Association
in general, please go to HAA's website.
Lo Kunphen School and Mentsikhang, Mustang,
Nepal
The
Lo Kunphen Medical School is educating Mustang’s next generation
of healers. Lo Kunphen admitted their second class of students
this year, and now has a total of 20 students enrolled. Gyatso
and Tenzin Bista, the brothers who founded the school, are the
primary instructors for both literary Tibetan and the medical
curriculum, while there are others to teach English, Nepali, and
math. Lo Kunphen has started a winter school in Pokhara, significantly
increasing the time students have to learn Tibetan medicine and
the intensive curriculum of the school.
DROKPA has worked with the founders of Lo Kunphen
to help them with fundraising strategies, long-term visions, and
to help liaise between the school and international donors. In
2001, DROKPA also granted Lo Kunphen $1000 which was used to build
an eco-friendly toilet and bathroom at school site in Lo Monthang,
and to help supply the school with audio/visual equipment to aid
in instruction.
Trans Senge La Amchi Association, Lingshed,
Ladakh
This
year, DROKPA granted the Trans Senge La Amchi Association $3000
for an endowment fund. This association of Tibetan doctors is
providing villagers critically needed health care and educating
the next generation of amchi in the remote region of Ladakh, in
the Indian Himalaya.
We
spent a week in Leh, Ladakh's capital, where we met with anthropologists,
Tibetan doctors, development workers, school students, and others
in an effort to understand the modern face of an ancient kingdom.
Local
Tibetan doctors in Ladakh provided a healthy perspective on DROKPA's
amchi projects in Nepal. We also met with the staff of the Ladakh
Ecological Development Group, an organization that has disseminated
alternative energy technology in Ladakh and Zanskar, as well as
successfully lobbied for a ban on polythene plastic bags.
We
then trekked to Lingshed to meet Geshe Ngawang Jangchup and visit
the Trans Senge La Amchi Association, of Lingshed village, in
the Zanskar region of Ladakh. Geshe is a whirlwind of a man, and
has spearheaded many inspiring community development projects
in his remote home.
The
Trans Senge La Amchi Association is also creating an innovative
community health insurance system. Every household contributes
Rs. 100 and receives free medical care for the clinic, which is
open five days a week. This system has been the work of
the French NGO, NOMAD,
in collaboration with local villagers, amchi, and Geshe la.
Tenzin
Norbu Lama, a key DROKPA partner from Dolpo, Nepal, visited the
US for seven weeks during Fall 2001. Norbu’s paintings have
been featured in many books, articles, as well as the Academy-Award
nominated film “Himalaya”. While he was visiting, DROKPA
organized a community discussion with Norbu after a showing of
the film “Himalaya” at Cornell University. Norbu also
taught a master's course in thangka painting at the Johnson
Art Museum. Please see Dolpo Artists' Cooperative
webpage to learn more about how Norbu is training apprentices
to paint and thereby create economic opportunities for young people
from remote mountain communities drawing on a rich cultural tradition.
DROKPA
transferred $5000 to Crystal Mountain to support scholarships
for students from underserved villages. Today, this model school
has 200 students studying up to class six. This year, Crystal
Mountain started administering central government examinations
- a recognition of the quality of education the school is providing.
The winter branch of the school commenced this year in Kathmandu,
providing Dolpo students opportunities to extend their studies
significantly.
DROKPA
Board Member Leona Mason has led groups of highschool students
on treks to Dolpo with Where
There Be Dragons, a learning adventure company that takes
travelers throughout Asia. Moved by their experiences teaching
local children in Dolpo, several of these students raised thousands
of dollars for the Crystal Mountain School. DROKPA
transferred $5000 to Crystal Mountain to support scholarships
for students from underserved villages. Today, this model school
has 200 students studying up to class six. This year, Crystal
Mountain started administering central government examinations
– a recognition of the quality of education the school is
providing. The winter branch of the school commenced this year
in Kathmandu, providing Dolpo students opportunities to extend
their studies significantly.
