ussed his program with a handful of students from the Korbel School of International Studies. He explained that the Tibetan Village Project is focused on teaching individuals marketable skills so that they can develop local business within the villages and earn money to support their families.
“I strongly believe in the idea of, ‘give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for life,” said Wangdu.
Humanitarian Tamdin Wangdu is the founder and executive director of the Tibetan Village Project, a nonprofit focusing on the development of Tibet’s poorest villages.
Tamdin Wangdu was born in a small village in an area of China referred to as the Tibetan Autonomous Region. As a child, emphasis was placed on education, and he studied while helping on his family farm. In 1990, he left Tibet and arrived in the United States with no money and no understanding of the English language.
In the summer of 2001, Tamdin learned that his father had died at age 57 after suffering four long days of acute stomach pain. In memory of his father, Tamdin started the Tibetan Village Project in order to fund a medical treatment and prevention program in his village and surrounding areas.
As a business graduate at CU Boulder, Wangdu has been able to build a successful enterprise and gradually help the Tibetan people learn skills that can provide a self-sufficient lifestyle. While describing the structure of the Tibetan Village Project, Wangdu told the students that he hoped his program could be used as a model for similar programs in the future. His main goal was to shed some light on the process of creating and running a non-profit organization.
In his lecture, Wangdu mentioned certain factors that individuals needed to consider while creating a humanitarian program based on community progress.
First, he specified that there was a difference between charity and development. He explained that development is about changing behavior in order to create self-sufficiency, and that giving is simply not enough.
“Charity is giving money to a person without any expectations. It’s kind of like a gift,”said Wangdu. “Development is giving a person money, and then asking what they’re going to do with it. It creates a sense of responsibility between the person and you.”
Then he discussed that the needs of a community should be determined on a local level. Each village can determine local problems more accurately than a government or a foreign organization, and it is imperative that the people within each area are consulted before work is done.
Wangdu warned the group of students pursuing any social cause that it would not be an easy task. He told them they needed to be realistic about the difficulties of making a change and chasing after a passion, explaining that many people fail because they find something to be too tough.
“In my mind, people often fail because they think it’s a quick fix. If it was easy, then everyone would do it,” he said. “I made a commitment. I learn, and I fail; but I get up, and I do it again.”
Wangdu was there to inspire the Korbel students, but he was also honest about the challenges that arise while trying to generate social changes.
He mentioned that the Tibetan Village Program has a volunteer organization for college students interested in traveling to Tibet for three weeks or longer. Visit www.consciousjourneys.org for more information.
