I came to Dharamshala in 2015 right after leaving my first job in the corporate world, and joining Lha Charitable Trust, a social work NGO run by Tibetans for the Tibetan community. It was a big change for me in all perspectives. Especially the friendly and close-knit community that made me feel at home. I was assigned to work as programme manager, coordinating language classes for adult Tibetans and working closely with a number of volunteer teachers from all parts of the world. After a short stint in that position, I have been working as the editor of Contact magazine, staff reporter and working on the layout of the magazine each month since 2016 with the help of our Editor-in-Chief, Jenny James, and our volunteer writers.
Looking back, I was assigned to this job with no background in the field of journalism, nor with any experience of working on layout designs, but with great trust and an opportunity to learn. In these past seven years, Jenny and I have worked together as a team – not missing a single day of our daily updates on google doc – which has been our virtual discussion table for each monthly issue! Whatever I have learned over the years, from writing short and objective news reports to finding consistency in the writing and keeping to deadlines – are practices developed under Jenny’s guidance. Despite living in England, Jenny has not missed work on one issue of Contact in all these years and her sincere dedication to help edit, proofread and stay updated with Tibetan news as a long-term volunteer has made Contact reach its current professional standard.
Each year, working with over 20 volunteer writers, Contact has played a vital role in informing and engaging local and international audiences about the issue of Tibet. I have had the pleasure of working with many wonderful writers and many of them have stayed in touch and continued to write for us from their home. I am grateful for their continued support and interest in the Tibetan issue.
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