Jhamtse International

This organization started around a dining room table and has gone on to do amazing things...and they're not done yet!

Be sure to watch the award-winning documentary "Tashi and the Monk". It tells the story about their important work from the perspective of the children and community they serve.

I've been involved with this wonderful organization for over 7 years. I am truly impressed with the wisdom, compassion and incredible energy that all of the people involved exhibit. Jhamtse Gatsal, the community and school of 'love and compassion' that was created to help children with trauma from the Monpa region of northeastern India is a truly magical place. As a Middle and High School educator, working with kids with trauma and disabilities in the United States, I know first hand how desperately we need places like this in the world. I highly recommend getting involved if you can!

Jhamtse International supports Jhamtse Gatsal Children's Community featured in the Emmy Award Winning movie Tashi & The Monk. Please watch the movie - definitely inspiring and in my case, life changing!

https://www.jhamtse.com/tashi-the-monk
https://www.facebook.com/jhamtse.gatsal

I was inspired by the movie to reach out to these lovely people. Love and compassion personify every Jhamtse Gatsal representative, from the children to board members and staff.

Jhamtse Gatsal Children’s Community was founded by a former monk, Gen Lobsang Phuntsok la. Gen Lobsang la was born in the Himalayan foothills of northeast India. He grew up at a monastery in the south of India, and came to Concord, Massachusetts, U.S. in about 2000, where he began teaching Buddhist sangha (groups) and raising support for his vision of Jhamtse Gatsal Children’s Community, a home and school for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children in his home district. Jhamtse Gatsal opened in the summer of 2006, with 35 kids. Now it is home to 90+ children, Classes (grades) PreK-12, and additionally supports fifteen graduates of the community in their college studies. When planned expansion increases capacity, the school will be able to accept additional children from Classes Pre-K to 12th grade.

Jhamtse International in the US was organized by Tibetan Buddhist monk, Lobsang Phuntsok in 2003 to form a base of support for his dream of founding a residential school for children in the greatest need from the villages of remote Tawang District in Arunachal Pradesh in the Himalayan foothills of northeast India where he was born. His vision was much more than just a school where the children also lived, but a full community, where everyone was a valued member. He named it Jhamtse Gatsal Children's Community, for the principles on which it was founded--Jhamtse, which combines the meanings of love and compassion, and Gatsal, which means garden. So it is a Garden of Love and Compassion for Children. The idea was readily embraced by Gen Lobsang's students in Buddhist philosophy in the US, but it was scoffed at in India. What did a monk know about how to run a school? He had no training as a teacher. How could a school be based on love and compassion? Schools need rules and a strict regimen. The early years of Jhamtse Gatsal, which opened its doors with 35 children in 2006, were filled trials and local opposition. It was a brave experiment, but could it succeed in raising and educating children whose early lives were quite traumatic, into loving, caring, capable human beings? Could it not only raise them to be wonderful, whole, human beings, but to want to give back to the people of their own impoverished region, being beacons of hope and light, or would they leave their home region for the teeming cities?
Thirteen years later, Jhamtse Gatsal has graduated two classes. All of the graduates, whether in university, or other post-graduate training, are committed to careers and lives that will help to meet the local needs they know so well. Jhamtse Gatsal is no longer an experiment--It is recognized throughout India as a model community, successfully healing children from trauma, providing an excellent education by keeping love and compassion at the center.
And Jhamtse International has grown from about 100 individuals in Massachusetts to be a worldwide organization with more than 5000 people who believe in and want to further the growth of love and compassion in the world by supporting Jhamtse Gatsal in India.

Jhamtse supports a school in a remote, impoverished region in the eastern Indian Himalayan state of Arunachal Pradesh. The school takes in the most at risk, often traumatized children and gives them home, family, community and the best education possible -- all based on the ancient concepts of love and compassion in this region peopled by a nomadic Tibetan population, the Monpa. The children, who would otherwise not have the opportunity for an education, for an opportunity for their future, blossom into loving, responsible young adults who are going on to the best universities in India and plan to return to benefit their region, their culture and to be ambassadors to make ours a better world. The school and community has become a model for Indian education. The founder, a Tibetan monk, Gen Lobsang Phuntsok has been asked to advise educators in India and abroad on lovingkindness and mindfulness in education. All who have visited the Childrens' Community, all the staff, have felt their lives changed by the experience. JerryZ

Jhamtse International is the most satisfying and fulfilling nonprofit I have been involved with. Their work in supporting a school and village for the most at-risk children is brave, generous and path-setting. The Children's Village in remote Arunachal Pradesh, India, provides home, family, the best education and nutrition to children who would otherwise not have any of these things. The school is path-setting in that all involved predicate all that is done on the basis of love and compassion, and the children blossom in that environment. Everyone who has experienced this amazing place is marked for life by the experience.

Being a part of Jhamtse Club truly changed my perspective on life and interactions between people from different cultures. I've donated to and been a part of charities and organizations that haven't been that satisfying because they felt so distant from the everyday people they were helping. Not so with Jhamtse Gatsal. From the first day I got involved, I was seeing pictures, and hearing the first-hand stories of the kids and the school and the villages. It was so personal. I felt connected to them. Eventually, people in the club wrote letters to the kids at Jhamtse, and I wrote one, too. When I say that they'd read them and written back, it made me so happy because Jhamtse Gatsal really is a community. Being a part of it has made me more optimistic and purposeful. It also feels so good to know that every dollar raised is going straight to the school, its upkeep, and its expansion to include more kids. This place really is a gem, a truly beautiful garden of love and compassion. -Danielle

The dedication with which the community serves its purpose shows that it strives towards working as a family- a place where love and compassion gets priority above all else.I am very happy to be a part of it.

I have joined Jhamtse Gatsal Children's Community as the Finance Manager in September 2006, just one & half months after this Community was started. At first I thought it is just an ordinary place and there is nothing much excited or new about it. But later, I discovered that this is truly a wonderful place, much and much more than I have expected. I am fortunate enough and thankful to lord Buddha that he has made me to be a part of the Community and Jhamtse International. We are in total 25 staff who are very fortunate & serving under the dynamic leadership of Venerable Lobsang Phuntsok. He has been with us for the last two years. Things have turned out a lot working together with him. He is so inspiring & energetic. I am always looking forward to consult him whenever I get depressed and he helps me a lot. After four years of its successful existence of Jhamtse Gatsal it has become a role model to the rest of the Community in the area. Jhamste Gatsal is truly a garden of love and compassion. I am extremely thankful to the supporters of Jhamste International from the core of my heart without them Jhamtse Gatsal would not be in existence. We have accomplished a lot in the past four years but still it is just a beginning and we have miles to go.

I have participated in the very beginnings of Jhamtse International from its inception. As a former teacher and professor and now a psychologist I have been so heartened by the development of this project in all its aspects. The school in India is a marvel - it has provided for all the needs of its students and its curriculum with its inclusion of teaching on compassion is light years ahead of the curriculum in any US public school. The support structure and the inclusion of young people in this country is also a very positive aspect of its organization. Talented and visionary people have given their skills to the organization and it is run effectively with money going to the school and delivery of service to the children. The three girls I sponsor are absolutely thriving in every way and it is a delight to hear about their progress. I feel confident that this program will lead to the full development of these young people and the school program will become a model for the educational enterprise that leaves nothing out for the heart or the mind.

Love & compassion is the perfect word to be incorporated in people of this organization. The strong vision & mission of Jhamtse Gatsal has inspired me a lot.

To be a part of this community is a privilege. This is a kind of organization which has a very strong vision with the destination not far off provided we work on the foundation of a kind heart & sharp mind.

Jhamtse Gatsal located in the verdant world of Arunachal Pradesh is one of the place which proves as a source of inspiration to many, lifting one's spirit in moments of despair. Built on the foundation of Love & Compassion it strives towards achieving great heights in forming a better world.

In the summers of 2006 and 2007 I traveled to the very remote part of India that is Arunachal Pradesh. Here, in the Himalayan mountains on the border of Bhutan and Tibet, is a small school that was started by Tibetan monks to serve the region's impoverished people. Teaching children of subsistence farmers ensures new possibilities for the region's future, and empowers the young people. Increasing the service to cover basic health care for the mountain population, which is otherwise grossly under-served, admits a ray of hope and health to an area where treatable illnesses often claim the lives of its citizens. This is a worthy cause to support. I have seen first hand what good the school does, and they deserve all the help they can get.

I joined Jhamtse many years ago as a participant in weekly Buddhist study meetings. Lobsang Phuntsok, our teacher, wanted to start a school educate the poorest, most deprived children in the area of northeast India from which he came. It was a long road but now Jhamtse Gatsal is bringing love, medical care and educating many children in the area as well as helping the adult community. The connection with the children is very deep, rich and personal. One can volunteer at the school and communicate with a blog which makes one's involvement immediate and personal. I have sponsored a child for several years and plan to visit the school in the next year or two. One can be involved in many ways; even though far away I assist with secretarial duties.

I have been a drama teacher for fourteen years now at the International School of Geneva. I heard about Jhamste Gatsal for the first time from my Indian friend who visited the school once. He introduced me to the Llama Lobsang at the helicopter airport of Tawang when I visited Arunachal Pradesh last spring. I had a nice conversation with the Llama, but at that moment I did not think that I would end up working there. It became clear for me only when I talked to a couple who worked at Jhamste and traveled with me in the helicopter. I heard such wonderful things about the school, and that they might also need a drama teacher for the summer. Back in Geneva, I wrote to the Llama to see if he was interested. He was. I came in July to spend a month at Jhamste, teaching theater and putting on productions of Cinderella and The Ugly Duckling. Upon arrival at the school, I was extremely touched when I was greeted with such a warm welcome. Even with my past career as an actress, I’ve never felt so welcomed and so special. What’s more, this feeling didn’t fade during my entire time at the school. The continual feeling of warmth and love was incomparable. I’ve never felt a stronger desire to be part of a community. For me, Jhamste is “heaven on earth.” I get tears in my eyes when I think back! I will definitely spend most of my post-retirement years at the school. I encourage everyone around me to go there and to experience this peaceful and joyful place. From the children of Jhamste, I have learned (and hope to keep learning) many important things: love, compassion, and caring. I’ve never been surrounded by these feelings in such an intense way. I am so thankful to the Llama and the children for the feelings of welcome and love that they have given me, and I am reassured that they are awaiting my return. Happiness, that’s Jhamste Gatsal! I feel blessed to have experienced it!

Although I've never traveled to Jhamtse Gatsal, I've heard about it many times at our Tibetan Buddhist group in Worcester, MA. Our teacher, Venerable Lobsang Phuntsok, is also the founder of Jhamtse Gatsal. At the school he founded, the central Buddhist principles of love and compassion are lived on a daily basis. The before and after pictures of the children served tell the story. Youngsters who look scared, underfed, and unclean are transformed into healthy, content youth. You can tell from the photos and descriptions of adult visitors that the children are prospering spiritually in addition to educationally and physically. My real exposure is to teacher, Lobsang. He is a humble, humorous man who lives and speaks of love and compassion on a daily basis. Any activity sponsored by him is deserving of support and endorsement. Barry Walsh

I'm grateful to have an opportunity to sponsor three children at Jhamtse International. Through the help of volunteers and donors they are sheltered, educated and most of all loved. Their story provides me a deep sense of community and profound joy.

I came to Jhamtse Gatsal when it was just a dream of a spirited and dedicated monk (my teacher), Venerable Lobsang Phuntsok. Some six or seven years ago, after the weekly teaching at one of the five Buddhist centers, he asked sangha members if they wanted to stay and hear about his idea of a school for the orphaned and impoverished children in a very remote area in India, where he spent his childhood years before he was sent to a monastery to study. And so, started the journey of Jhamtse Gatsal (a Garden of Love and Compassion in Tibetan), now in its fifth year of operation. Today, the school houses 75 children who once would not have known what being a child meant because they had to learn to fend for themselves and their families from the moment they could stand on their feet. These children are a living example of the difference that a nurtured childhood and an education based on love and compassion can make. The smiles on their faces are the return on the investment that we are making on their future. I have been involved with Jhamtse International in one way or another over the years, but this summer I decided to volunteer one day of my workweek to serve this community and help it grow. In turn, it has given meaning to my regular job where I was struggling to find purpose. Now my job has become a means to an end!

Hi. This is going to be reallllly long. Apologies in advance. But bear with me if you can: I knew Lobsang Phuntsok (the Buddhist monk who founded Jhamtse International and Jhamtse Gatsal) because my mom was attending his teachings in Massachusetts. I've always been interested in "community service" and issues of development, so went over with him to visit the school in the summer of 2008, after graduating 12th grade. In my (way, way too) short visit (10 days), I basically fell immediately and absolutely and entirely in love with all the kids, with the incredible work it is doing in their lives and for the villages of the region as a whole, and with its entire mission and vision and passion and spirit. Long moved by stories of international poverty (particularly the stunning disparity between how life-savingly far a dollar could go oversees and the comparative frivolity of things I spend money on at home), I was initially blown away by the radical difference in the lives of the kids before and after coming to Jhamtse Gatsal. While there are a lot of really wonderful and valuable things about life in the villages, things to honor and preserve and learn from, there is also some pretty remarkable and heart-wrenching poverty, and a lot of resultant suffering from unnecessary and premature loss. Jhamtse Gatsal turns life around for the children--the worst of the worst off--who are selected to live there. They receive food, clean water, health care, and the chance to enjoy childhood without worry about (or responsibility for) daily survival resting so heavily on their shoulders. And above and beyond the physical benefits of life at Jhamtse Gatsal, the community has a really striking and distinctive energy about it, which is impossible to enunciate completely in words, and would be even more impossible to mandate or institutionalize, but it’s the kind of thing that can be inspired, and that you can catch from someone similarly ‘infected’ with it. There’s a higher purpose behind the work getting done at Gatsal: the teachers don’t do this work because of the salary, but because they care so deeply about the children, and believe so whole-heartedly in the importance of creating this home in which they can explore and grow. They really are like a family, not just living and learning together but taking care of each other in a way I haven’t seen so pervasively in any other community. You can see it in the way the kids help out with the chores, not as a “duty” or “work” separate from life itself, but almost instinctively. They understand—though not on an intellectual level—the interdependence of life there: that everyone must chip in, in order to sustain this community that in turn sustains each of them. You can see the community’s spirit also in how the older kids take care of the younger ones, with such a sense of love and so much care, like brothers and sisters; and you can see that modeled in how the teachers and amalas (house mothers) care for the kids like they’re their own, with an unconditional love, faith in their potential, and determination to help them learn (and learn always with them) how to be better, more understanding human beings. These are the tenants the school is founded on: not merely a sanctuary from poverty, suffering, and despair, but a mountaintop set aside for love, connection, and joy to grow. Seeing the intensity of the generosity and caring and compassion taking root and flowering in these children, in an isolated community founded on these principles and lead by teachers dedicated to them, is how I know now that they absolutely are possible to teach, and every kid inherently imbued with their potential. Another thing that’s become clear to me over the last few years of visiting the school, and watching the children grow, is how much Jhamtse Gatsal and its mission are not just about the children it most directly “serves.” It revolutionizes their lives, certainly, but since my initial impression I’ve come to realize that these children are not the end recipients of Jhamtse Gatsal’s work, but the vehicles. In the long-term-big-picture, they’re going to be the ones to go back to their villages and be the change-bringers of their generation. At Gatsal, they’re not only learning the tools to be able to do that, but the motivation to want to. How they interact with each other—helping with the laundry and tucking their younger siblings in—is a smaller-scale manifestation of the same internal compassion for others which has motivated any positive change in the world, throughout history, on any scale. A number of the kids have discussed with me some of the problems they’ve experienced in the villages, and Lobsang recounts that often they come back from their vacations asking the really difficult questions: like why their brother doesn’t have food to eat every night when they do, or why their friend can’t come to Gatsal also. They face the disparity between first-world security and third-world uncertainty—which we know exists but are often pretty removed from—on a daily basis. Children dying from diarrhea and dehydration are just across the street. Young as they are, they see this need and their privilege and already exhibit a desire to “give back,” or rather “pay forward,” the gifts that they’re so aware of having been granted. I have trouble describing my involvement with Gatsal in terms of a benefactor-beneficiary relationship, as I feel like is typically how these kinds of projects are conceptualized. But really I feel like so much the lucky one, to get to know (and have learned so much from and been so inspired by) all of the people working so hard there, with such dedication and commitment to this higher purpose. I’ve mentioned already how the amalas, teachers, and staff are all Amazing, and such crucial, pivotal parts of the school’s infectious energy. But this article wouldn’t be complete without discussing the incredible, and unfaltering, and so, so, so vital contribution of the children of Jhamtse Gatsal. Without them and their remarkable, indescribable energy, Jhamtse Gatsal would be a mere shell of the vibrant, unique, inspiring example of community that it is now. All of the older children (some as old as 15 or 16), having lived for the last four years in this place as it’s developed and defined itself , have come to embody its principles so fully. They, now, as much as the amalas and teachers, set the tone and example. Jhamtse Gatsal would neither be possible, infrastructure-wise, if it were not for the relentless energy the students pour into its care; nor would it have the unique spirit that it does, without the incredible generosity and compassion embodied and exhibited by the students who have been absorbing and internalizing it for the last four years. The 75 students currently at Jhamtse Gatsal are not beneficiaries of the work my friends and I are doing here at Vassar to raise money for the school, but rather they are our partners in this bigger, broader mission: to cultivate and spread love and compassion, in all the different corners of the world in which we happen to live.

In 2006 a friend asked if I would like to sponsor a child in children's community for orphaned and disadvantaged children in India. Later I met the head of Jhamtse International, Ven. Lobsang, and having learned of my background in business and board development asked me to assist the JI board in their strategic and financial planning. Since that time I served on the Board and traveled to the community in India twice. It has been one of the most remarkable experiences of my life, travelling to one of the most remote parts of India in the Himalayas (near Bhutan), setting up an accounting system for the community and assisting in work and planning there. Also visiting with our sponsored child Mani who is now 8 years old. Lobsang is untiring in his devotion to this community and it has been a pleasure and deeply fulfilling contributing to this effort.

I've been one of the fortunate few to have had the opportunity to spend 4 months as a volunteer at Gatsal, the Jhamtse-supported community in the remote Himalayas of far eastern India. I went there, hoping I could share a few of my own talents, to contribute to the good that the community is accomplishing in the surrounding region, and left feeling like I'd gained so much more from the experience than I could ever give. That's just the kind of love and learning everyone there has to share! They are already accomplishing so much good, and have the passion to do so much more!

Lobsang started teaching in Massachusetts in 2001. He taught me enough about using compassion (both toward myself and others) in my daily life to significantly change my opinion of myself and also my relationship with my spouse and others. Lobsang then founded Jhamtse to help others learn the value of compassion in daily life. This organization has ground from one small group to 6 groups serving 200 people in Eastern Massachusetts. Jhamtse has also started Gatsal, a school for poor students in the remote Himalayas of northeastern India. I have had the privilege to sponsor Konchok, a student at that school for the last 3 years. I have watched him grow for a dirty, scared kid, to a happy healthy one. I hope will be able to visit Gatasl and meet Konchok in person soon.

Jhamtse has several major activities: Buddhist teachings in many Massachusetts communities; the Jhamtse Gatsal School in Northern India; and Jhamtse Youth programs. Each of these three focus areas works to spread love and compassion in the world. I will write about the great benefits of the local Jhamtse communities, and the teachings of Lobsang Phuntsok. His teachings on Buddhism, and how to live with love and compassion, have been enormously helpful to me in all aspects of daily life. Practical tools, and wonderful anecdotes constantly come to mind when I am struggling with different situations. The Jhamtse Gatsal School provides housing, food, clothing, education, and health care to 73 residential children in Northern India. It is a resource to other villages in Arunachal Pradesh. Jhamtse Youth programs have provided the opportunity for high-school and college youth to visit Jhamtse Gatsal school, and to bring practices of love and compassion to their school communities. Donations to Jhamtse International will support these three efforts, and will especially change the lives of those in the Jhamtse Gatsal School community, a Garden of Love and Compassion in northern India.

Jhamtse International programs significantly improve the lives of thousands around the globe. The best example is the Jhamtse Gatsal children's community in northeastern India. Jhamtse Gatsal, which means garden of love in Tibetan, is currently home to 74 children who come from the surrounding remote Himalayan villages where poverty, lack of healthcare, education and opportunities are extreme. These children often have no parents and have to either work in the fields or stay home to take care of siblings. Education is not an option because getting food on the table trumps all. I've seen firsthand how these children are transformed into happy and healthy kids within a few days of arriving at Jhamtse Gatsal. The house-mothers (Ama-la's), teachers and staff provide a loving family environment for these children to live and learn. Love and compassion run rampant at Jhamtse Gatsal and it's breathtaking to see what happens to the children and adults who live in that environment. I spent 10-days at Jhamtse Gatsal in the summer of 2008. I have never felt and seen so much caring and happiness from so many as I did on those magical days in August. These 74 children now have an opportunity to break the cycle of extreme poverty by learning skills they can use to transform their home villages and communities. Jhamtse Gatsal has also started community outreach programs to provide needed services to the surrounding villages. Although only 4-years old Jhamtse Gatsal has made a significant impact on the lives of the children, staff and surrounding villages of this remote mountain region.