Hundreds turned out to see His Holiness the Dalai Lama inaugurate a new hostel for a Dharamsala charity on November 19.
Opening the hostel for the Tong Len Charitable Trust, which provides education for Dharamsala’s slum children, and much needed medical care in the town’s poorer communities, His Holiness reminded the world that it isn’t just the welfare of struggling Tibetans that deserves his attention.
‘Everybody has the right to overcome poverty and it is everybody’s moral responsibility to look after each other,’ he told a crowd that included over forty international visitors. Heartily commending Tong-Len’s founder, the monk Jamyang, for his dedication to improving the future opportunities of underprivileged Indian children in the Dharamsala area, he added, ‘As long as there is money with The Dalai Lama Trust, it’s yours.’
Bharatiya Janata Party vice president and MP, Shanta Kumar, also announced a donation of one million (10 lakh) Rs from his MP fund to the Charitable Trust last month.
However, Jamyang and his crew of dedicated volunteers haven’t been resting and waiting for generosity. They have been working since the organization was founded in 2002, determined to help the displaced communities of people close to Dharamsala improve their situation. From Rajasthan to Maharashtra and all points in between, they come, and too often their journey leads to a slum with little shelter and fewer opportunities to find good nutrition or education.
Jamyang told the Times of India, ‘When I was a Buddhist student, every day I would see from my window some kids eating rotten bread and tomatoes from heaps of garbage. It pained me and I surrendered my dinner for some days and started sharing it with those children… It marked the start of my campaign.’
The new hostel – Tong Len’s third, will be home to children under the age of three. Whereas older children rise early for exercises and breakfast before taking a bus to one of the best public schools in the region, these young ones will be steeped in educational social activities in the hope of making their transition to public school a seamless one. Alongside the vital healthcare that Tong-Len provides to thousands who dwell in Dharamsala’s nearby slums, Jamyang considers education to be the key to a brighter future for many of the area’s children.
Some of Tong-Len’s children come from families in which girls have never made it beyond Class V, or brothers begging on the streets are simply a fact of life. Now, having been offered a combination of stability and opportunity, many of them top their classes and profess long-term goals of becoming doctors or engineers.
Young girls supported by Tong Len enjoy the festivities
Volunteer, Angela Clyburn, explained that: ‘the long-term vision is to provide these children with educational opportunities that can take them out of the slums and all the way through university graduation.’ Along the way, their teachers and mentors instill in them the value of giving back to their community, in the hope of turning the cycle of poverty which brought the children to Tong-Len in the first place on its head.
While Tong-Len’s newest building may boast a very popular benefactor, the children still rely on personal generosity in the form of sponsorship for many of their daily needs. Individual sponsors not only have 
the flexibility to dedicate their gift to either educational or residential needs, they are also kept informed about the children they are supporting with regular updates and photographs. Monthly sponsorships are very affordable, and Tong-Len guarantees that every penny goes directly to a child in need.
As His Holiness has stressed repeatedly throughout his global campaign for compassion and social justice, it’s our moral responsibility to look out for one another.
For more information on sponsoring a child through Tong-Len, please contact anna@tong-len.org.
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