Hands Coming Together
New Age, New Skills for a Sustainable Future
In 2018, the Jhamtse Gatsal Children’s Community started a new project called Lakpar. Lakpar loosely translated means “hands coming together.” It is a beautiful local Monpa tradition where villagers come together to help each other during any major work – be it during peak agriculture season or construction of a new house for a fellow neighbour.
The Lakpar Fellowship is in partnership with the Pema Chodron Foundation. Inspired by the Lakpar tradition of selfless service, Jhamtse Gatsal started a Lakpar project to build collaboration, confidence, creativity and problem-solving skills for the children and Community. To guide the project, Ananya Agrawal, a Masters Design student from the National Institute of Design joined the Staff for 10 months as the first Lakpar fellow.
In Lakpar, Ananya brought design thinking skills to students and played an important role in changing everyone’s mindset towards waste. The project is an attempt to build a more comprehensive understanding of mediums of learning and the ways of incorporating 21st century skills to help it to adapt to changing times for a more sustainable future. Locally available material mediums have been explored and documented, supported by action research methods.
Lakpar (This video brings to you the Lakpar Exhibition Day, February 2nd, 2019 and the work that went behind the projects displayed, in a glimpse.
Sazo Workshop (This is a video compilation of an experiential education workshop conducted for the children of Sazo Government School, Arunachal Pradesh to introduce them to how materials and design play a role in waste management and also how relooking at materials as a resource can help in creating a sustainable livelihood.)
If you are curious about the community and its people do click here to know more about the beginnings of Jamtse Gatsal - Jhamtse Gatsal is a children’s community located in remote foothills of the Himalayas, bordering Bhutan and Tibet, in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, India. It is a non-profit organization which was founded in 2006 by a former Buddhist monk, Lobsang Phuntsok. We provide a loving home, education, health care, and nutrition to over 90 children coming from diverse backgrounds of adversity and poverty from the surrounding villages of this remote region.
Do watch the Emmy winning documentary "Tashi and the Monk", if you want to know more about the place, visit the following links:
https://jhamtsegatsal.org/
https://www.facebook.com/jhamtse.gatsal