Philosophy

Jhamtse Gatsal is Tibetan for “Garden of Love and Compassion.” Founder Lobsang Phuntsok chose the metaphor of a garden because gardening believes in the future and the potential of a tiny seed to grow into a magnificent, bountiful tree. As a gardener envisions abundant, fruit-laden trees when s/he tirelessly nurtures the seeds so does our work of raising and educating children at Jhamtse Gatsal.

We see in children the immeasurable potential to become their most amazing selves. However, this potential is not something that we, the adults, carve or shape them into, as though children were lifeless logs of wood. It is nurtured over the years through love and compassion so it can grow, sustain and regenerate itself in countless ways for generations to come.

Our work at Jhamtse Gatsal is one of nurturance, not fixing. Our actions are nurtured with compassion and guided by wisdom. These are our core values. We seek not to fix the outside world. As teachers of life, the adults in the Community relentlessly work with the children to help them develop a deeply rooted and firm inner core that is evinced in their outward actions.

We believe that with a network of deep, inner roots, “right living” and right livelihood would be the natural choices our children would make. As we tell our children, we can address the biggest challenges that our planet faces today – poverty, hunger, climate change, environmental degradation, violence, conflict, war, and human rights injustices – through inner strength. Our thinking creates our actions; thus, our behaviors and actions automatically change when we change our thinking or mindset.

Model

Jhamtse Gatsal is a “right living” laboratory to practice the principles of love and compassion in raising and educating our children through an integrated educational model which nurtures the heart, minds, and bodies of children and adults. Over the years, we have been working on developing this philosophy into an educational model by practicing it in our Community. In the past year, we have developed a Concept Note elaborating on the principles and pedagogies involved in this educational model.

A summary of our educational model can be found in a recent article by our Founder in the special edition newsletter from the Govt of Arunachal Pradesh on its 50th anniversary.

Pedagogy

Jhamtse Gatsal’s transformative pedagogy is a three-step learning process.

STEP ONE

Learn

During learning, children gather sensory data through experiences and knowledge by listening, reading, observing, and doing.

STEP TWO

Reflect

Children analyze and internalize the acquired knowledge through self, peer, and group thinking, discussion, and debate to understand and make their meaning. This analysis helps them cultivate wisdom from their own knowledge and realization.

STEP THREE

Engage

Children internalize the learning from their cultivated realization and wisdom to create a transformative impact for themselves and others through active engagement.

Core Practices

A home: Jhamtse Gatsal is a safe and loving home to some of the most vulnerable children from the remote Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh. The Community focuses on the social, emotional, and physical well-being of the children in its care who come from severe trauma, adversity, and poverty backgrounds. Currently, Jhamtse Gatsal is home to 107 children who primarily belong to the Monpa tribe.

Education: Jhamtse Gatsal provides free and quality education to all of the children in its care from Pre-K to Grade 12 on campus. The school follows the CBSE curriculum. The Community focuses on its unique model of education: The Three Essentials of the 21st Century: Educating the Heart, Mind, and Body to foster wholesome student learning and expression in academic, social-emotional, artistic, and essential life skills.

Higher Education: We believe that every child must have the opportunity to fulfill their inherent potential. Hence, we support our children in their higher education pursuits after graduating from high school. Thus far, 21 of our graduates are either studying in different universities across the country or preparing to begin their higher education journey. They have chosen a wide variety of career paths, from Tibetan Medicine to Tourism Management, etc. We believe they are our ambassadors who will carry forward and bring the Jhamtse vision alive.

Healthcare: Jhamtse Gatsal provides basic health care to all of our children and staff members. In this region, healthcare facilities are inadequate and severely underequipped. A healthy body is one of our root systems, we ensure that our children’s health is monitored regularly.

Nutrition: Most of the children accepted at Jhamtse Gatsal have suffered from severe malnutrition before joining. We provide three healthy and nutritious meals and one snack to our children daily. The majority of our nutritious produce is grown in our organic gardens.

Sustainability Practices

Giving a Break to Mother Earth and Feeding the Hungry: Since 2017, the whole community has been following the practice of giving up one meal a week to acknowledge Mother Earth's generosity and give her a small break from providing for our daily needs. The food saved from our weekly one-meal abstinence by our community of around 150 people can feed the hunger of around 50 local children for one month. This simple practice helps all of us understand interdependence at a personal level and makes us refrain from feeding our greed and focus on feeding someone’s need.

Becoming a Zero-Waste Community: In 2018, our children and staff members took a unanimous pledge to make Jhamtse Gatsal a zero-waste community. This decision was founded on our philosophy to not just fix the waste management problem but to reflect and foster a zero-waste consciousness. Today, we make lifestyle choices that minimize waste and garbage. We do this with the understanding that Mother Earth does not need us to save her. By managing our habits with deep intention, we support Mother Earth and enable mindful, healthy, and sustainable living for generations to come.

This year we have tied up with the local administration to make Jhamtse Gatsal a central point for plastic collection and processing in the district. We are also collaborating with Padma Shri Dr. Rajagopalan Vasudevan, the plastic man of India, to lay a durable, cost-effective road using shredded waste plastic. We hope to implement this as a pilot project for a 1 km stretch of road inside our campus. This can be replicated in the region based on its durability and feasibility.

Creating an Eco-friendly Village: In 2015, Jhamtse Gatsal began the process of creating a sustainable, eco-friendly village. This village now includes three natural cob buildings. These buildings are powered by renewable energy and supplied with harvested rainwater. Those choosing to live in these cob houses bear the responsibility for organically growing their own food and practicing a zero-waste lifestyle.

100% Food Production: Today, a large portion of our food is brought in from nearby Assam, where much of the produce is grown using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. This raises economic, health, and environmental sustainability concerns. Jhamtse Gatsal has made some headway in addressing these concerns by organically growing much of our vegetables. We hope to fully meet our food needs locally and sustainably in the next few years.

We are looking for low-lying farmland in the region which we can till for horticultural purposes. We are partnering with Nabkisan (a subsidiary of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development - NABARD) to build a new greenhouse on our campus to grow produce that requires more heat and humidity.

Ensuring Food Security: Today, even our remote region has started to face the challenge of losing its indigenous crops due to growing reliance on hybrid varieties developed and promoted by multinational seed companies. To preserve our unique agricultural heritage, we started the practice of collecting local seeds as well as seeds of nutritional and medicinal Himalayan plants in 2019.

Vermicomposting: With rampant globalization threatening even remote regions like ours, farmers are increasingly resorting to chemical fertilizers and pesticides to enhance growth. In order to encourage them to rely on natural pesticides and fertilizers, we use, produce and sell vermicompost in our Community. We have been selling vermicompost on a small scale and hope to scale up our production capacity to create a social enterprise that can meet the needs of our region as well as train other farmers in doing it for their own communities.

Apiculture: Honeybees are the primary pollinators for our food sources, so maintaining a healthy bee population is in our best interest. We are working on resuming healthy apiculture practices in the region to help replenish the biodiversity and ecology of our Himalayan region. Moreover, our apiculture practices will benefit our community through the production of by-products like honey, beeswax, flower pollen, and royal jelly for nutritional and medicinal purposes.

Water Management: While our region sees high average rainfall every year, water scarcity has become a growing challenge due to wasteful use and poor management practices. At Jhamtse Gatsal, we practice sustainable water management by harvesting rainwater and recycling grey and black water through the Decentralized Waste-Water Treatment System (DEWATS) approach. Our future plans include finding creative landscape design solutions to make more effective and efficient use of our lost groundwater.

DEWATS has been implemented in one of our family houses. We have developed a larger rainwater harvesting strategy for the entire campus which we will begin implementing shortly with Biome Environmental Solutions, Bangalore.

Renewable Energy: A region as remote as ours suffers the impacts of inadequate infrastructure. To combat the inconsistent power supply issue, our Community is aiming to move towards clean-energy practices.

At present, 60% of our energy needs are met by solar power. We are working with SEDCO Ltd to establish solar power as one of the primary sources of electricity on the campus. They have visited our campus and set up the basic infrastructure required to understand the energy consumption on campus and viable locations for solar panels. We hope to initiate the implementation of this project once we have sufficient data regarding energy consumption.