Causes: Education, Public & Societal Benefit

Mission: Machik's primary purpose is to incubate social innovation in tibet and to strengthen communities through programs for sustainable communities, the summer enrichment program (sep), women's empowerment, youth leadership, social entrepreneurship and governance. The organization prioritizes community-based initiatives that draw on socially innovative and entrepreneurial solutions to education, environmental protection, women's empowerment, economic development and health issues, and so on. Machik also engages in research that serves the purpose of the overall mission of the organization.

Programs: Machik corp (or machik) founded the award winning ruth walter chungba primary school in the rural community of chungba on the eastern edge of the tibetan plateau. The school provides free education and boarding for over 700 rural tibetan children in both primary and middle school. The children's parents are almost all illiterate subsistence farmers and nomads. These students are the first literate generation in the history of this remote community. Since the school first opened in 2002, these rural children have been the top performers in the county in tibetan. Graduates of the primary school place highly in both tibetan and chinese language testing, thereby showing the vital importance of mother-tongue based bilingual education. Machik also continues to support the non-teaching staff support and the middle school graduates to attend high school in other counties. Machik began preparations to support the first group of high school graduates from chungba to attend university.

machik facilitated the 9th annual summer enrichment program that provided a unique and effective summer learning program for tibetan rural students from across the tibetan plateau to learn english, tibetan, music, art, health, social business, math, science and so on. Also, sep convened 23 tibetan, chinese, canadian and american volunteer teachers to instruct the students and create an innovative environment of learning and care. Sep is the first summer program to bring together tibetans, chinese and global citizens in a unique way to create new encounters for greater understanding.

tgp was co-convenor of another forum on a key policy issue for tibetans which is conservation. It was held at the harvard shanghai center with tibetans, chinese, and global participants. The event built on past successes in opening a truly new space for tibetans, chinese and the international community to gather and to discuss urgent issues in tibet.