Some FOTSI students, their families, friends, and workplaces.
Lily Farm Fresh has been longtime supporters of the Friends of Tibetan Settlements in India (FOTSI), which helps Tibetan refugees is resettlement areas of India. In fact, Lily Morgan and her company were integral to bringing the Dalai Lama to Colorado in the 1980s.
FOTSI Projects
FOTSI puts health and education as top priorities for the Tibetan refugees. This non-profit organization operates primarily in the Mundgod (Doeguling), and Bylakuppe Tibetan Settlements in Karnataka State, India.
One of their main projects is the Drepung Gomang School. This monastic school, orphaned or impoverished boys live and get training in the ancient traditions of Tibetan Gelupkas. They study Tibetan reading and writing, English, debating and the standards such as social studies, math and science. They also receive training with the texts of Tibetan Buddhism and the Drepung Gomang Monastery. This school is very iportant for boys who have been exiled from their homeland and so have no access to their home culture.
The Aid for Needy Tibetans is a more general project that sponsors Tibetans who have the greatest need. The program started out by helping a young girl crippled by polio who needed operations and schoolong; she now has a Master’s degree and a job. The Aid runs the Home for the Elderly and an Emergency Fund for short-term needs.
FOTSI also aids Tibetans with necessary medical care. The Doeguling Tibetan Resettlement Hospital provides sliding scale medical and dental treatment to 18,000 Tibetans — and local Indians who need the service.
FOTSI Positive Feedback
FOTSI has received a lot of positive feedback for their good works.
On march 3, 2014, the Rector of the Central School for Tibetans in the Mundgod Refugee Settlement in India made a comment concerning their sending food aid to the school he is running:
“What a welcome news you have for the students of my school again and I thank you from the core of my heart for your effort and concern for my students. Talking about the supplementary diet fund, I would like to inform you that I will need this fund more than ever before. Some Tibetan schools in Nepal were in serious need of funds for diet and other things. The Department of Education (of HH the Dalai Lama’s Government in Exile) had no option but to divert all their Supplementary Diet funds for schools in India to help those in Nepal…. please keep helping us in whatever way possible for the supplementary diet of hostel children…once again, thank you for all the trouble you are taking to bring smiles on the faces of our children.”
Social worker Dickyi Chodon from the Doeguling Tibetan Settlement Office in Mundgod, India, said:
“Thank you very much for your generous consideration towards our needy community. With your help many children are getting better education opportunity, many homes are provided with better livelihood and many elders are getting proper medication.”
A letter from Tenzin Lhakey.
The students have been especially thankful. Nursing student Tenzin Lhakey said in a letter:
“I feel very grateful to you for your kind support for my further studies. As my family background is not good to support my studies, so I felt it difficult to study and concentrate, but now I am very happy and thankful to you for giving me support for my studies…”
Business student Lobsang Choedon wrote similar in a letter enclosed with her good grades:
“I will always cherish deep gratitude for your support towards my studies. Your scholarship helped me tremendously to pay my college fee. Thank you so much for helping me till now and I will never forget your kindness.”
Economics student Tenzin Phuntsok has been a sponsoree since he was a small boy. He wrote recently:
“Thank you so much for being with me forever in my life as a supporter and I am really grateful for having you in my life. So I’ll write you soon and waiting for your beautiful letter with so much excitement.”
Tenzin Lhadon was having to stay home and care for a cow due to poverty, even though she was the smartest in her exams in school. After receiving aid from FOTSI, she was able to continue studying to become a math teacher. She wrote her thanks:
“Thanking you for your kind consideration towards me and my family… I am very grateful
to you. I conclude my short mail here with lots of love and care…My whispering prayers are always with you.”
Lily Farm Fresh and FOTSI
Happy Tibetan children.
Lily has said of FOTSI that she believes so strongly in the work that they do, she supports them no matter what. She added:
“I feel so connected to the Tibetans plight, because I love my country so much and I cannot imagine being displaced from it…I cannot imagine a worst plight then having your country being taken away, it would be like someone taking America away from us….and resettling us in San Salvador…..”
Lily is Buddhist. During the 1980s she went on a quest to find spiritual enlightenment. She did a lot of talking about spirituality and even traveled to India. She visited Sarnath, where Buddha gave his first lecture. She also sat under a descendent of the Bodhi tree where Buddha found enlightenment.
In 1980s, the Dalai Lama visited Colorado. Lily heard him speak in Boulder and in Denver. In fact, her company was the main sponsor of his visit, and she along with 20 others were granted an audience with the Dalai Lama. She said of his talk:
“What I like most about the Dalai Lama is his beautiful simplicity in such a complex world. He makes everything so simple. Someone asked, ‘What do you think we should do about disintegrating families?’ He took a moment and thoughtfully replied, ‘Quarrel less, smile more.'”
Needless to say, Lily was transformed by the experience of meeting him. “After meeting him, I was in a good mood for months.” She added:
“To think we would ever have a leader so dedicated, so committed, so determined, yet, so peaceful and lovable, that he would spend the rest of his life trying to lovingly peacefully regain our country….how can any American wrap their brain around that?”
Lily has said how much she loves and appreciates his positive force on the planet, stating that true genius is displayed by people who can take the world’s largest problems and make them so simple.
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