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CONTACT: Laura Ingalls (laura.ingalls@worldlearning.org) in Washington, 1.202.464.6973

SIT Graduate Institute alum helps provide primary health care and education in Tibet

Kunchok Gyaltsen and Tibetan Healing Fund

BRATTLEBORO, VT (October 7, 2008) -- Written by Susal Stebbins, SIT Graduate Institute student

Kunchok Gyaltsen used the tools he gained at SIT in the late 90s to grow programs that now provide primary health care and education to thousands of underserved women and children in rural Amdo, Tibet (now part of China’s Qinghai province) through the Tibetan Healing Fund.

Kunchok came from eastern Tibet to the strange land of Brattleboro, Vermont in 1997 as a Tibetan buddhist monk and medical doctor with aspirations to master the English language so that he could further his studies in the US. He was enrolled in SIT’s intensive English as a Second Language program for a year before he entered the SIT Program in Intercultural Management.Although he considered other programs, Amchee (the Tibetan word for doctor) Kunchok says “I decided that the SIT program was most useful for going back to Tibet - SIT had a unique learning system, very interacive, very intercultural. I was impressed that people at SIT really care about problems in developing countries like Tibet and China.”

Already a respected leader in his commuity, SIT helped Amchee Kunchok acquire the additional insights, skills and networks he needed to develop highly effective health and education programs in Tibet. Kunchok found that SIT’s philosophy of sustainable development blended well with perspectives from his tradition. “The concept of sustainable development is like Buddhist thinking; you learn to live longer without creating destruction, to use energy wisely to satisfy needs but not desire too much.” Kunchok also feels that SIT’s practical management classes for program planning, budgeting, and evaluation were indispensible for developing his organization. 

SIT colleagues were instrumental in the early stages of the Tibetan Healing Fund (THF) as Professor Paul Ventura and Kunchok’s PIM58 classmates Jessica Ravetz and Daniel Dodd all played roles in setting up the Tibetan Healing Fund as a legal Non Governmental/Charitable Non-profit Organization. Jessica continued working with THF for many years, serving as board president and executive director before moving out of key leadership positions to focus on her family. 

Kunchok earned a second master’s degree in primary healthcare management at ASEAN Institute for Health Development in Thailand, studying health programs in Thailand, Burma, and Nepal to gather more ideas for the Tibetan Healing Fund. He also continued his work in Tibetan medicine, serving as Executive Director of Kumbum Tibetan Medical Hospital and expanding the use of Tibetan medicine throughout China. 

Since its inception in 2001, the Tibetan Healing Fund has helped provide much-needed culturally competent maternal and child health care and education. Kunchok relates that he started THF because, although some NGOs were doing positive work in Tibet, “I wanted to practice what we had learned at SIT, to work with reality from our own passion. The experts from the outside are often ineffective, because they don’t understand the language, the cultural differences, and they often spend minimum time learning about the community.” The THF programs were designed with Tibetans living and working within the communities being served. Kunchok explains that such involvement was crucial for the programs to be effective: “We needed to build trust, and to know and fit within the government framework. We make very little noise, we just want to do the work – so we asked the local teachers, doctors, governors: what are the health needs?  What are the education needs?” 

The Tibetan Healing Fund provides community midwife training, develops and distributes Tibetan language health care materials, and has created a system of midwifery that combines the most useful Tibetan and western medical practices to address high infant mortality rates. THF is currently raising funds to complete the Tibet National Birth and Health Center, which is expected to open in the spring of next year. The facilities will provide pre-natal, delivery, and post-natal maternal and infant care and serve as a training center for midwives and medical students to gain skills and gather materials to use in their home villages.

On the education front, THF has been addressing the dual challenges of lack of access to education and lack of adequate Tibetan language education. Although schools in China are technically free, until two years ago the costs for books, uniforms and other school fees had to be borne by families, putting education out of reach for many poor children. THF initially provided scholarships to elminate these barriers for 300 Tibetan children, allowing them to begin or continue elementary school. Now the government covers all costs for elementary students, and THF is working on strategies to support students to finish middle school. THF has also been training teachers and creating textbooks and other classroom materials to facilitate Tibetan langage learning. Kunchok explains, “Children are losing their opportunity to learn Tibetan language. The teachers have only been trained to teach Chinese language, and Tibetan is very different. Chinese use characters for reading, but in Tibetan children need to learn the sounds of the letters, to use phonetics.”

Kunchok sees many issues that he hopes THF can help address in the future. “The schools’ conditions are getting better, but marginalized areas, especially nomad areas are very far behind. In boarding schools, the nutrition can be really poor, sometimes students have very little to eat, not enough warm clothing, and there are health treament issues. You see a lot of yellow hair, white eyeballs, skinny and short children.”  In health care, there is a lack of knowledge about many health issues, especially infections like HIV/AIDS and other STIs, and women are still delivering babies at home without trained assistance.  Kunchok also notes that food costs are way up, leaving less money for health care and other needs. He says, “We are especially concerned about the children. All problems are significant; daily problems affect them immediately, and also their health for the rest of their lives.”

Kunchok is pleased that the work of THF has been able to continue growing without much disruption because the people working there are well aware of the needs and sensitivities of the situation and US Americans have provided critical financial and organizational support.

For more information or to support the Tibetan Healing Fund, please go to www.tibetanhealingfund.org

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