PETERHEAD Academy prefects Ewan Strachan and Joanna Bain will meet the Dalai Lama tomorrow (Wednesday).
The head boy and girl, accompanied by school administrative officer Heather Bicocchi, will attend an audience with His Holiness at the Scottish Parliament Offices in Edinburgh, along with representatives from eight other schools across Scotland.
Peterhead Academy has been selected through its links with a Tibetan school in Himachal Pradesh and an orphanage in Arunnachal Pradesh.
Each year academy pupils sponsor six Tibetan children.
These links were made after Miss Bicocchi’s visit to India, Nepal and Tibet in the summer of 2000 with a friend Linda Stormonth, a teacher at St Machar Academy.
One of the reasons for the trip was to visit Linda’s Tibetan sponsor child in a school in NW India.
Prior to the journey, staff and pupils of Peterhead Academy donated £800 for the Tibetan children and St Machar Academy donated £400.
Beneficiaries were Chauntra School, the Tibetan Refugee Centre in McLeod Ganj and latterly, an Orphanage just outside Llasa in Tibet.
At the Refugee Centre they met a 15-year-old boy who had just arrived after an exhausting and dangerous crossing of the Himalayas to reach freedom in India. He is now being sponsored and excelling in his studies.
Fundraising includes prefects’ charity can collections, sponsored walks, ‘Mrs McGhee’s bad hair day’, and small individual year group collections.
“We spent five weeks in Tibet, Nepal and India and every single day of the trip was a pure delight,” said Miss Bicocchi.
“Because of our connections with Tibet we have been invited by the Dalai Lama’s European representative to have an audience with him. It is a really special occasion and we feel enormously privileged.”
On the day, the Dalai Lama will lead ‘Time for Reflection’ in the Chamber with MSPs. He will meet with school pupils who will have the opportunity to put questions to him.
All pupils in attendance will have the unique experience of presenting Katas (white silk blessing scarves) to His Holiness.
