 |
| Jay and Ryanne (right) conduct a workshop for Yeshi Khando (in pink) and students at Upper TCV |
For me, today’s tasks were all connected with what we are calling Project Happiness. Randy Taran’s work with high school students has now expanded to become a project where students in three countries are studying the same book and exchanging their thoughts about what happiness is, and how to behave in ways that promote happiness all around them.Three groups of students are participating: one of them is in California, at Mount Madonna School in Watsonville; another is in Jos, Nigeria; and the third at the Tibetan Children’s School in Dharamsala, India. California and India being iterally on opposite sides of the world. [Read more…]
By Tuesday, I had discovered that I could not both blog and really have quality time at the summit. So now that I’m posting this, the three day summit is over and the workshops have begun.
Eric Brewer of the University of California, Berkeley, gave an interesting keynote presentation this morning, discussing wireless technology and a project supporting eye clinics that perform cataract operations in remote locations for approximately $10 per patient. The details will be available elsewhere online. One of the things Eric has done is to stretch the range of wi-fi greatly – currently tested to 60km, but they’re going to test at a range of 280km and there is no reason it shouldn’t work. This would be particularly important in India, where almost all people in the country reside within at least 80km of a network connection point – so if this could be bridged by wireless, it could be a big improvem ent in availability of access. 
Today was the anniversary celebration for the Tibetan Children’s Villages – founded 46 years ago, at the request of His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, to take care of Tibetan refugee children coming over the mountains to India, following China’s assertion of control over the Tibetan plateau. As I arrived on foot, His Holiness the Dalai Lama was speaking to the assembled crowd of many hundreds on the playing field at Upper TCV. In Tibetan, of course. I listened for a short while, and looked at the children arrayed across the playing field in colorful costumes, and then pressed on to the AirJaldi auditorium. Nawang Dorjee, education director of TCV was the first official speaker at AirJaldi and introduced us to the background of TCV (photo).