Events
The Conservancy works to promote the world’s understanding of Tibetan Buddhist culture through educational programs with partners such as the Smithsonian Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Aspen Institute, Tibet Fund, Tibet House, and many monasteries and nunneries. Working with the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in the year 2000, the Conservancy organized the largest exhibition of Tibetan culture ever held in the West, with over 1.5 million visitors.
Featured Event
Lhundup Gurung’s Legacy
At 7 years of age, Lhundhup Gurung walked away from his impoverished home in the remote mountains of Dolpo, Nepal. He left his home, encouraged by his mother and father, in the company of his brother Palden, who was 11.
Through the highest mountain passes, this little boy walked for 10 full days, committed to his dream. He sought an education, it must be free, and he’d found his chance at the Kag Chode Monastic School in Kag Beni, Mustang.
Lhundhup Gurung reached the school, adapted well, becoming a star student. This smart, athletic, friendly little boy now found another goal, and he was adamant: he wanted to become a monk, and studied hard.
This past winter, though, illness struck the boy with high fever, weakness and severe head pain. Local treatment failed. Lhundhup went into a coma. Cared for at a hospital in Kathmandu, he stayed in ICU a month, and then in private care. He suffered from both meningitis and TB.
Lhundhup Gurung, age 8, passed away on March 11, 2011. The cost of his care was covered by a small nest egg – his new school’s meager building fund. The Kag Chode Monastic School of Mustang had carefully accumulated funds to build a new school. Cramming eager children in inadequate facilities, the monastery had slowly scraped together funds for the modest new school, a place where eager children could be housed and fed and educated. To care for Lhundhup la, though, the monastery’s choice was clear: Funds were needed, first for the small boy’s care and then for his funeral, and the monastery did not hesitate to provide them. Those funds are gone.
But we can now make certain that the chance to build that new school is not lost. Please join us to build a Legacy Fund, in Lhundhup’s name. Replace the funds so kindly offered by the monastery –$5,000– and let other children have the dream that Lhundhup sought. The monastery remains committed to offering free education to the poorest children of Mustang and the surrounding regions, which have so few resources and offer so few chances for their children to attend a school.
Restore their funds, so they can build their school. They now have 22 children waiting for this chance. His childhood poverty and leaving home at 7 did not rob Lhundhup la of his desire. Help other children just like him – living in an unusually harsh and desperately poor area—achieve their dream of learning. Please help the Kag Chode monastery accomplish this. Restore the funding for their school.Though he passed on, we know from the choices he made in his brief life, that Lhundhup la wanted to learn
Any donation, large or small, is welcome. The Conservancy for Tibetan Art and Culture (CTAC) will use one hundred percent for Lhundup’s Legacy.
