Tibetan Women’s Association successfully completed the second Operation Groundswell Program.

Tibetan Women’s Association has successfully coordinated yet an another Program for a group of Operation Groundswell students from 17th to 20th July, 2018 led by Ms. Dawa Dolma, Environment Officer, TWA along with the OG group leaders Nirvana and Jasmine.

Day 1– The first day of the program was visiting and getting introduced to various NGOs around Dharamsala. First session of the day was with Tibetan Women’s Association, followed by Tibetan Youth Congress Lha Charitable Trust and Gu-Chu-Sum Movement of Tibet and then concluded the day with Students for a Free Tibet-India. All the NGOs gave one hour duration to brief about ones organization followed by Q&A session. As usual, group had their lunch at Soup Kitchen from Lha Charitable Trust.

Day 2– On the second day, Ms. Tenzin Choezin La, Head Consultant at Tibet Career Centre led the session talking about Gender in Tibetan community linking it to religion briefly. This was followed by group’s visitation to Ama Adhe’s residence where they are informed about her political experiences in Tibet and Chinese prison under severe tortures and starvation. After lunch, they visited Stories of Tibetans office and watched a Tibetan documentary called “What Remains Us” where they all became very emotional and got to see the realities of Tibetan people inside Tibet under Chinese’s rigid policies.

Day 3– The third day began by touring around the museum and craft centers at Norbulingka Institute. Afterwards, they headed to Tibetan Nun’s Project, Dolma Ling where the Director Mrs. Rinchen Khando La warmly welcomed them talking about how Tibetan Nuns Project, Dolmaling was formed and successfully running now, how Tibetan nun’s are getting empowered gradually and then cleared the doubts of group through interactive session. They were then toured around the nunnery. The afternoon session was with Mr. Tenzin Tsundue La, Tibetan activist and writer at his Rangzen Ashram. Tsundue La shared the group about his Activism life and series of experiences traveling around the world talking about Tibetan Freedom Movement and his acquaintance in prisons. He also shared the vision of keeping Tibetan Freedom Struggle alive and then concluded with an interactive session.

Day 4– The last day of the Operation Groundswell’s tour was a half day workshop about Conflict Resolution led by Mrs. Sonam Dechen La, the Associate Director of Tibetan Centre for Conflict Resolution followed by group’s session with Ms. Tenzin Dawa La, English Researcher from the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy talking about Human Rights Violations inside Tibet under the Chinese rule.

Thus, the four days of Operation Groundswell’s Education program partnered with Central TWA completed successfully with all thanks to the different Non-governmental Organizations and speakers who gave up their precious time in educating the groups in a best way possible. We henceforth, would like to extend our utmost thankfulness to all the great speakers for providing such enlightening sessions. Thank you all.