By Wasfia Nazreen
Alma, a US citizen has been working on cleaning the environment of Bhagsu, Upper Dharamsala for the last three years. In the beginning, he got his motivation when after coming to such an ancient religious sanctuary- the foothills of the Himalayas where almost all Gods, Goddesses and other Celestial beings are mentioned to flutter about, he was bombarded with an exuberant amount of litters everywhere!
Out of all the places of Dharamsala, he initiated his program at Bhagsu because of its orientation with nature. This year he is here with a team of foreign volunteers and has so far spent 20,000 Rupees from his personal fund in order to accomplish his mission. “It is sad that Dharamsala attracts such diverse international crowd for the teaching on compassion, yet there is no serious implementation to keep the five elements clean and safe for a healthy learning environment.” He finds the timing during His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s teaching to be of crucial importance.
A voluntary program was carried out to pick up garbage at the Bhagsu River, the streets and hillsides of Bhagsu town on March 16th and 23rd. Alma, on his personal expenditure, built five new carbage cans, and educational signs in Hindi, Tibetan and English to go along the trash disposing bin. He and his team also conducted educational workshops with children at the Bhagsu, Indian Government school on March 21st. After school hours, the elementary children (ranging from 8 to 13 years) were taken to the Bhagsu playground, where through a circus-show with trash (also voluntarily organized), the children were taught the importance of keeping the environment clean.
This project, where Alma has been working relentlessly with Tibetans, Indians and the greater international community to clean upper Dharamsala is something he sees as a lifetime commitment. He is scheduled to go back to the States at the end of this month in order to raise funds to hire permanent workers at a salary base, atleast 1000 dollars a year to pay the salary of two green workers (under Tibetan Welfare Office, Mcleod Ganj), who would be picking up garbage on a basis of eight hours per day. Next year, this project hopes to expand to Dharamkot. The Tibetan Welfare Office (TWO) is actively implementing projects in social, cultural, economic and environmental fields, which combine to promote sustainable development and a sense of universal responsibility.
The problem of garbage in upper Dharamsala has increased in the past years due to an ever-increasing number of Tibetan refugees, Indian merchants and an overwhelming number of tourists! This group of people, unlike the local community, do not own fields and depend entirely upon purchased goods. Increased tourism has further resulted in a general increase of income and consumption.
