Description of Manjushree
The orphanage has a website with much interesting information. The URL is:
http://www.manjushreeorphanage.org/
A Buddhist monk founded Manjushree Vidyapith School and Orphanage in 1998. Lama Thupten Phuntsok was born of a peasant family in a small village near Tawang. From an early age he had a passion for service to the helpless and downtrodden. As a young monk he excelled in his education and was sponsored to attend university. He was then appointed as lecturer in Tibetan language and Buddhist studies. On visits home to Tawang he was reminded of the struggle for survival of the people of the mountain villages and he made the decision to return home and do what he could to help the people of his homeland. He taught in the Tawang Public School for six years during which time he gained respect and recognition and mobilized support from many quarters. With the support of the Army District Administration and individual benefactors at home and abroad he was able to found the school and orphanage.
There are now over 100 children being cared for and educated at Manjushree, with boys and girls in almost equal numbers; most of them are orphans, the rest were destitute or have a physical handicap. Children above the age of three years can be taken in. Most of their parents died of illnesses arising from unhygienic living conditions and lack of proper medication. TB and other lung diseases are rife in the area. Accidents are also a major cause of mortality due to the hard manual labour undertaken to survive in the villages of this region.
The orphanage has several classrooms but only one purpose-built accommodation block, and until recently this has been able to accommodate only about half of the children. The girls slept in the accommodation block, which was built 4 years ago, but the boys were living in two classrooms. This meant that there was a shortage of indoor teaching space and classes were regularly held out-doors, sometimes in poor weather! Both girls and boys often slept two or even three to a bed.
This situation improved during early spring 2007 when the top floor of the accommodation block was completed and the boys moved into this new accommodation. The girl's ground floor dormitory now has a new wooden floor and every child has his or her own bed with new mattress and bedding. Both boys and girls have indoor bathrooms and hot water from the solar water heating system (when the sun shines!). A further storey has now been added to the hostel building to provide badly needed accommodation for Lama Thupten and other staff. A new small toilet block has also been built.
The orphanage has the service of 17 staff in total but the rooms for them are limited. The Principal (Lama Thupten) and the General Manager have been living in the same room which is also the school office, and prayer room for the whole school. The 9 teaching staff share 6 rooms and 2 bathrooms. The domestic staff and their children share 4 small rooms for their living accommodation.
FMVSO, through generous donations from supporters, was able to make significant financial contributions allowing completion of the hostel building.
However, much remains to be done. There is a waiting list of children wishing to join the orphanage. With this in mind, there is a proposal to construct a 100 bedded boys hostel with provision also for 3 teachers rooms, 2 caretakers room, 2 store rooms and toilet-bath blocks. The current accommodation block would then be reserved for girls only. Once completed, the proposed hostel will largely solve the accommodation problem of the students as well as for the teachers and other supporting staff.
According to Lama Thupten, one of the main problems arising from the absence of a boy's hostel is that all the children have been prone to diseases. He says 'this has created a massive health problem in the orphanage'. The completion of the dormitory block was an essential first step towards solving this problem, though over-crowding remains and the orphanage still lacks any medical facility or space to separate sick, infectious children. It also lacks essential medicines. All the children, whether sick or healthy, live in the same rooms and as a result diseases such as chickenpox, scabies, cough etc spread among the children. In 2005, with the outbreak of chickenpox it took almost a month to get rid of this disease completely. For these reasons another priority is the construction of a clinic that can provide medicines and also provide separate accommodation for sick children.
In November 2007, a US charity embarked on a major medical mission to address health issues at Manjushree and in Tawang and the surrounding villages. Their aim is to provide sustainable medical support. Members of the mission will be returning to Tawang in Spring 2008.
Classroom accommodation is still inadequate; nursery and kindergarten classes are held in the dormitories and many lessons are still conducted out of doors. It is hoped that building of a new education block will start in 2008.
Future fund-raising by FMVSO will aim to support provision of new buildings to address these problems, in addition to providing support for maintenance and education of the children.
