Contact was born in 1997, the brainchild of Dara, Mark and Scarth, who owned and ran the Khana Nirvana restaurant with friends from America. Rabsel, a local Tibetan, worked with them and together they came up with the idea of producing Contact as the Dharamshala Community Publication after holding several roundtable meetings with representatives of the Dharamshala community including Indians, Tibetans and foreigners to discuss ideas. It was published monthly from the restaurant – for the first year Dara wrote the content, Mark was editor and Rabsel designed the layout. The costs were covered by income from advertisements and everyone worked on a voluntary basis.
One of that group of friends was Scarth Locke who remembers, “Mark Moore, Dara Ackerman, Dave Bloom, and I opened up Khana Nirvana around the time of Losar of 1997 with the hope of creating a space where you could find good, safe vegetarian and vegan food and learn about how to get and stay connected to the local community. I don’t remember who first voiced the idea of having a newsletter, but it took a number of people working very hard to get it off the ground. Big Joe, an ex-pat who had been living in McLeod Ganj for a year or so, was crucial in getting local businesses to buy advertising space in the magazine, and Tashi Wangdu (and later Lobsang Rabsel) jumped right in to help assemble and edit Contact, along with Mark and Dave providing a lot of technical and editorial support.”
After the first year Tashi took over the content with Big Joe on editorial until 2001, with Rabsel continuing on the layout until 2008. Another Tibetan, Tamdin Tsetan who now lives in Canada was the distributor – he made sure it reached all the hotels, restaurants and the Central Tibetan Administration Museum at Tsuglakhang, the main Tibetan temple in Dharamshala. In those days the main readers were tourists and locals, copies were not posted out either within India, nor abroad.
From 2004 Lha Charitable Trust in McLeod Ganj provided office space and a computer for the Contact team which consisted of Rabsel, who was the only staff member, along with volunteer writers. In return for this, Contact provided Lha with a regular half page of advertisement space.
Rabsel remembers those early days, “I found it a great initiative–especially for someone like me who came from Tibet where there is no freedom to share or express oneself. Contact has served as a medium to tell our stories to the world public, especially Dharamshala being an international tourist hub back then.” He continues, “It all revolves around working with people for the people and I also saw it as a medium to connect with international people. Many of the people I have met while working on Contact or at Lha have become my life long friends and I am in touch with most of them”.
Lha Charitable Trust took over the production of Contact in 2012 and Rabsel became a full time Lha staff member, handing over his role in Contact to Lha, although he continued as distribution manager until he left Lha in 2018. Ngawang Rabgyal, as new the Director of Lha, became Contact’s Managing Director. Ngawang had a news background and had published a book with the World Wildlife Foundation on Tibet’s environment. Rabsel reminisces about the handover to Lha, “It was my decision as it is obvious that Lha as an organisation has more human resources and has more potential to carry on. It was a good decision and indeed Lha produced a better quality news magazine and has worked with a number of volunteer writers from across the world each year”.
Ngawang remembers that time, “When I joined Lha Charitable Trust in 2007, Contact was managed by my friend and former colleague Lobsang Rabsel, working from an office in Lha where I was a computer teacher. I remember Rabsel was always very busy at the end of each month finalising the magazine for publication. Also, he was struggling with a poor computer and internet problems and finding the right volunteer for editing. After I took charge of Lha, he became Lha’s Volunteer Coordinator, we offered him a volunteer assistant and the opportunity to continue his work for Contact alongside his other work. In addition, Lha provided better facilities for producing the magazine, including a workspace with a computer, internet and a volunteer for editing and proofreading etc.
Screengrab of Contact’s website
Under Ngawang’s direction the Contact website was set up alongside the monthly printed magazine and it was registered with the Government of India Newspaper and Broadcasting – after a few rejections, becoming the only long-time free English medium monthly publication in the exile Tibetan community to do so. Initially the magazine was run with a series of volunteer editors, each taking up the reins for a few months until Jenny James arrived in December 2012 and has been editing it ever since from her home in England, or from McLeod when she is there, in collaboration with a Lha staff member in the Lha office. Ngawang takes up the story, “On the production side, Lha appointed a permanent member of staff as editor for Contact Magazine, to work alongside the volunteer editor-in-chief Jenny, focusing on daily updates on the news and issues and training other members staff on the production of the printed and online versions. My former colleague and friend Dukthen Kyi was the magazine’s first staff editor and she made significant contributions until she left Lha, when Tenzin Samten became editor and has been doing a wonderful job. Both of them have worked closely with volunteers, and especially with Jenny.”
Lha staff packing Contact for posting within India and abroad
Every year up to 1,000 copies of each of the 11 issues have been published, freely available in the hotels, restaurants and other outlets around McLeod Ganj, with several hundred posted out to organisations and individuals around the world – only taking a break during the Covid-19 pandemic. Between 2013 and 2022, Contact has worked with over 230 volunteer writers bringing you stories of the people who make up the Tibetan community in exile through our People section, as well as up to date news with over 1,500 news articles, 88 People stories and 15 NGO profiles.
Before the emergence and widespread use of social media platforms, Contact as a community publication served as the medium to advertise and share community information to both visitors and locals. Now the website has gone from strength to strength, updated daily and shared on social media to provide a platform to gather all the Tibetan news in one place, freely available to everyone either online or in the printed monthly format.
And now Contact is 25 years old! We are immensely proud of what we have achieved in bringing you news and information for 25 years and now we are saying farewell. The news is all there for you online, the need for us to bring it all together in one place is no longer. So, this is goodbye ….. keep your eye on the Lha website for future projects, the team is brimming with plans and ideas!
Contact is distributed freely around Dharamshala
In our 25 years we have embraced change and enjoyed bringing you the news; we have loved the connections around the globe with our team of volunteer writers and all the people who contribute in so many ways. Read on to hear their stories!
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