The Dalai Lama and his younger sister set up a scholarship with Nova Southeastern University that will send two Tibetan students to study free of charge in Davie.
By EVAN S. BENN
ebenn@herald.com
When the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, directs someone to do something, they listen.
In 1964, he told his younger sister, Jetsun Pema, to lead the Tibetan Children’s Village, a school and community for 51 young Tibetan refugees in Dharamsala, India. She helped expand the village into a network of 17 schools and 16,000 children throughout India.
On Wednesday, Pema met with Nova Southeastern University administrators to finalize plans for a scholarship that will bring two students from the Tibetan Children’s Village to study at the college’s Davie campus.
”My brother, His Holiness, has always said that the best thing we can do while in exile is give our young people a good education,” Pema, 64, said in a interview with The Herald. “The children are the seeds of the future.”
Her brother, Tenzin Gyatso, 69, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, talked with university officials about the possibility of a scholarship when he spoke at NSU in September during a five-day stay in South Florida.
When he returned to India, home to about 100,000 Tibetan refugees, he asked Pema to follow up with the school. NSU administrators offered to pay full tuition, room and school-related expenses for two Tibetan students a year, beginning in August.
The Dalai Lama, one of the most recognized figures of the Buddhist religion, has lived in exile since 1959 in India, where he leads Tibetans who have resisted a half-century of Chinese rule.
In following Tibetan tradition, the Dalai Lama was recognized at age 2 as the incarnation of the Buddha of Compassion and the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama.
Tibetans who flee China for India or other countries are not able to return to their native land, Pema said.
FACULTY PLEASED
Many parents who want their children to get a Tibetan education send them across the Himalayas alone to seek asylum in India. As a result, many children at the Tibetan Children’s Village have been separated from their families for years.
NSU’s faculty members are pleased to welcome the Tibetan students, and they are excited about the prospect of beginning a relationship with the Tibetan Children’s Village, said David Dawson, executive director of university relations.
The students, both 19, were chosen for the scholarship from about 40 applicants. The selection committee looked at their grades and personalities, Pema said.
”We wanted to make sure they would be able to cope with the situation in America, because things are very different here,” Pema said. “In America you have to be outgoing.”
Pema said her organization will soon begin building its first college in the southern Indian city of Bangalore.
NEW LINKS TO COME?
When it is completed, Pema said, she would like to start a program where NSU professors and graduate students go to India to help teach the Tibetan students and train their teachers.
