While many of us are familiar with the story of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s journey into exile, the experiences of the tens of thousands of housewives, shopkeepers, farmers and craftsmen who fled Tibet in the Dalai Lama’s wake have not been recorded. Khagyun: Stories of the Tibetan Diaspora, has taken up this task. Using basic equipment and volunteer help, we are audiotaping and transcribing these stories of courage, loss, fortitude and survival, and offering the stories to the family of each storyteller. Young Tibetans in India face a particularly uncertain future since they have no country of their own. We hope that these stories will serve to help them as they grapple with the difficult decisions they face. Clues to help all of us solve the riddles of war, ecological devastation and racial and religious intolerance also lie like buried treasure in these tales.

The tellers of these stories are now old and every day some die. We are therefore looking for immediate support to do a one-year pilot project in Bylakuppe, the largest Tibetan settlement in India. We need funds for a professional video camera, a desktop computer and printer, a laptop computer, storage media, transportation, and communications. We estimate at this point that we need US $40,000 to complete the initial phase.

Things look hopeful. We have received our first grant of $2,000 from the Guerrand-Hermes Foundation for Peace. We have the support of the local representative of the Central Tibetan Authority, of Bylakuppe’s largest monastery (Sera Je), and several volunteers from within the lay Tibetan community. We also have the support and help of Lama Doboom Tulku, the Director of Tibet House in New Delhi. Most importantly, our work so far has demonstrated an enthusiastic willingness on the part of the older generation to share their stories with the young.

Upon completion of the pilot project, we will train and equip small teams to further this work in the three areas containing the major Tibetan settlements in India (the south, the northeast, and the northwest). Our long-term vision includes a proper archive of video, audio and transcribed materials, indexed and housed in a suitable facility, and a website that provides online access in both Tibetan and English. And we hope to provide paid work at a good Indian salary to young Tibetans to help in this effort to preserve a precious part of their heritage. Your questions, suggestions and letters of support are most welcome at: khagyun@gmail.com. (our new email address will be info@khagyun.org. This will be in operation starting the second week in June, 2005)