Golog Education

Today’s children, tomorrow’s future
Phende Menkhang; A school, a monastery, a hospital

Led by initiator, Lama Jigmé Namgyal, the Golog Support Foundation takes care of the education for small nomadic children. The foundation adopted a school in the town of Dawu where free education is provided to a total of 105 children from the area. In this group are also children who are fully orphaned as well as children that are half-orphaned. The orphans, who no longer have any family that could take care of shelter and financial support, their needs are provided by the monastery and the school that is under its auspices. The school houses 28 beds.

Full orphan

The monastery supports the school in the form of donations that people bring to the monastery. Monks who receive an income donate it to the children to buy blankets, books, food, medicine, etc .. Due to the remote location of the monastery, these donations are little to nothing. The roads are often impassable due to heavy rains.

Half orphan

The education provided by teachers that are monks who are connected to the monastery. They  care for children aged 6 to 13 years. After the age of 13, the choice can be made to continue studying at the monastery to become a monk or to study at a public school in the city Gabde.

In the rapidly changing Tibet, education is essential to the transmission and preservation of Tibetan cultural heritage. In the monastery and at school there are only boys. This has to do with the fact that only monks reside in the monastery and most of the children will continue in their education to become monks when the time is right to make a choice.

The Golog Support Foundation has a separate branch Childfund in its foundation. Incorporated here in are nomad children not covered by this project and exists for their separate sponsorship.

General education in Tibet.
Some nomadic children are very young, going to live in the monastery around their 5^th year. They receive their sustenance, lodging, and training. Other children spend much of their childhood with their families. If the family has enough money the child can attend a regular public elementary school where they can often go to live in a dormitory.

In 2014 Antje Steenhuizen visited the educational project of the Golog Support Foundation. She documented this in her report “a lot of the students I met at the institute never had a chance at an education. The institute was for them the first introduction to an education. Some children are already 14 years old when they begin to learn the Tibetan alphabet. They have never been to school before that time instead they helped their parents in herding their cattle.

By donating to the project Golog Education / Pende Menkhang funds will be used for subsistence, better beds, care for teaching materials, and there is a desire to care for even more children.