Our New Learning Center

Background

Our current school buildings have become too small and inadequate for our learners’ educational needs. They are also unsafe for our seismically vulnerable location. We have reimagined a new learning space that will support our learners and educators to engage with and nurture our Jhamtse educational model of educating the heart, mind, and body.

Model

Our new learning space will manifest our vision, mission, and daily practices to build personal discipline in our learners, ultimately nurturing our Jhamtse culture. This space will also reflect our rich cultural heritage and aesthetic style.

We envision a learning space that will equip our educators with a greater capacity to respond effectively to the diverse learning needs of their learners. Ultimately, our physical learning space will foster the 5Cs of 21st-century learning—Creativity, Critical thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Compassion.

Our New Learning Space

The design of Jhamtse Gatsal’s new learning space will enhance the educational experience of all learners. It will allow learners to make choices and experiment with learning techniques to discover how they learn best and where their true passions lie.

Our Partners

We are excited to have partnered with Takaharu and Yui Tezuka and their amazing team at Tezuka Architects for this vital initiative. Tezuka-san and Yui-san have extensive experience designing transformative learning spaces for children, such as Fuji Kindergarten, named the best school in the world by the OECD and UNESCO.

In getting to know Genla Lobsang Phuntsok, our founder, and our Community, Tezuka-san has experienced a deep connection. He feels that working with Jhamtse Gatsal will be the culmination of his life’s work. He said he aspires to build a new “best school” in the world.

In the early stages of design and development, knowing the full cost of the finished building is hard to predict. However, we believe the complete building to support a full PreK-12 education will be two to three million dollars (USD).

Architectural Note From Tezuka Architects

This building represents “Śūnyatā“ one of Buddhism's most important philosophical concepts. Amongst other things, it is meant to represent hollowness or emptiness. It may also mean zero, the root of all mathematics. Zero can become anything. 

In other words, it’s about sharing. 

This school, nestled deep in the Himalayan mountains, aims to be the best educational facility in the region. 

The pedagogy is based on the Tibetan Buddhism practice of three stages of learning: Here, we'll name it seeding, reflecting, and sharing.  We have studied and tested a completely new school planning based on the three stages. 

This plan will be the first of its kind and hasn't been seen anywhere in the world. It is not going to be squared, as education doesn’t warrant square shapes. Rather, the space will be organic, composed of many bubbles, like a life form. 

The size of the cells will be very diverse. Some smaller for cozy sharing. Others are bigger, to share with a large group or the community. The school building will welcome people worldwide, so students are invited to share ideas and brush up on their knowledge and wisdom. 

We want to start the best educational facility in one of the most remote places in India.

This new learning space will be built using local materials, such as wood and stone. At the same time, cutting-edge structural analysis ensures the safety of the children. The construction will represent and empower many facets of the local community, such as its economy, cultural pride, and reforestation.

There used to be self-sufficiency in the local communities. Whenever a new couple would start their life, villagers would all come together to build them a new home. We follow their example.

Unlike what has become current practices in building with concrete and using industrial materials, the school building will return employment to the locals and rekindle ancient techniques and appreciation of timber construction.

We are also trying to use smaller woods while inviting the children to plant new trees on the mountain.

The new school building design manifests the core values of Educating Heart, Mind, and Body while also representing the beautiful local culture and will bring pride to the community. 

Support Our New Learning Space

100% of your donation will go to creating our new learning center. If you are considering a large donation of over $10,000 USD, please email mark@jhamtse.org, and our Executive Director, Mark Foley, will provide the support you need.

We thank you in advance!