Final Reports

Book Project for Dongdatan School Project Manager: DawaDrolma (Britney) Buy 670 Tibetan and English books for Dongdatan School and create a school library. This will lead to better teaching and learning experiences for all involved. The school will gain a higher reputation, and thus more students in the area will consider pursuing their education. Funds needed: $1,274   ( 10,126 rmb) The Shambala Connection funded this project

Dawa Drolma is from Hualang Village, Dongdatan Township, Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County, Gansu Province, China. She graduated in 2006 with an Associated degree in English from Qinghai Normal University Nationalities Department's English Training Program.

What? 670 English and Tibetan books for Dongdatan School .
Who? Students and teachers from Dongdatan school, Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County , Gansu Province.

Project Summary
Project title : Book Project for Dongdatan School

1. If the school's resources improve, this will lead to better teaching and learning experiences for all involved. The school will gain a higher reputation, and thus more students in the area will consider pursuing their education at the school past grade six. This in turn will improve the general standard of living in the entire community.
2. Students could frequent the library to read after classes, thus constructively using their leisure time.
3. The students' scores on the Middle School and High School Entrance Exams would improve, due to their gaining a more developed understanding of general knowledge and Tibetan history. This would give them access to higher levels of education that would otherwise be unattainable.
4. The students will no longer be ignorant of their traditional and local culture.
5. Schoolteachers would no longer worry about letting their students leave the school after 10 years without learning anything about their own culture, if they could choose from a hundred Tibetan books to teach their students.
6. Both the students and the teachers could improve their English if there were a place where they could easily find English teaching resources and study materials. This would lead to greater self-confidence and higher job prospects for the students in later life. English is the gateway to all levels of higher education in China beyond high school.
7. More resources for teachers would stimulate them to be proactive inside and outside of the classroom. This would result in a more motivated and inspired class.

Details of project activities  

1. Contact the school leader on the phone and discuss the urgent needs with him. (Completed)
2. Hold a meeting with the schoolteachers to plan the project (Identifying what kinds of books are needed, and who will be responsible for the sustainability of the project). (Completed)
3. Contact the bookstore and find out the price of the books. (Completed)
4. Find out the transportation fee. (Completed)
5. Write project proposal. (Completed)
6. Secure donor funding.
7. Purchase the books from One Plus One Bookstore and Foreign Bookstore, in Xining City , Qinghai Province.
8. Transport the books.
9. Distribute the books to the school.
10. Go to the school and interview the teachers, students; visit some families and interview some parents to check the progress this project has brought.
11. Take pictures
12. Write the final report.
13. Send the final report and the pictures, and the receipts.

Original Proposal

Dongdatan Township Background:
Dongdatan Township is located in the Eastern part of Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County, Gansu Province, China. There are 12 natural villages (4000 people in total, consisting of Tibetan, Mongour, Hui, Mongolian, and Chinese people) under the administration of Dongdatan Township Government. People here make their living by farming, mostly. They grow wheat, corn, potatoes, and barley once a year, depending on seasonal changes.

Many of the Tibetan people in Dongdatan Township have lost their traditional language since the Cultural Revolution. They speak a language that is a mix of both Tibetan and Chinese. Most of the younger generation (up to thirty years of age) only speaks Chinese, imitating the Chinese people living in the villages. Therefore, the Tibetan school children learn Tibetan only within their school environment.

Two of the 12 villages have grade-one village schools for the children five to seven years of age. Another village has a primary school that teaches Grade One to Grade Six. This village is ten kilometers from Dongdatan School. The remaining nine villages' children all have to go to Dongdatan Township School for their education. Most of them have to walk at least for 40 minutes to get to the school.

I choose Dongdatan School from the three schools to do this project because Dongdatan School has the most responsibility to educate children in Dongdatan Township. It is the main school that most children go for getting education.

Dongdatan School Background:
Dongdatan School is located in the Center of Dongdatan Township. The school teaches to Grade Ten level. In 1979, it was upgraded into a bilingual boarding school, and Tibetan was taught to students from Grade Three onwards. Before 1979, this school could not afford for the dormitories for the students who lived in far villages. In 2005, the school started teaching Tibetan from Grade One, and English from Grade Two.

There are 10 grades in this school, from pre-primary to ninth grade, with 283 students and 29 teachers in total. 47.3% of the students are female (134). The remaining 149 students are male. Among the 283 students, 93 are middle school and 190 are primary school students. 12 of the 29 teachers are female (41.3% of the total).

Problems:
(1) A lack of study materials affects the students' results on important advancement exams. Being the only comprehensive school in Dongdatan Township, Dongdatan School has a huge responsibility in encouraging students to attend school. However, because of its limited capital, it lacks many necessary facilities, such as bathrooms, a storehouse for the physical education equipment and a cafeteria.

Most significantly, it does not have a library that provides any Tibetan or English study materials. The students do not have any access to study materials outside their classrooms, which affects their grades when taking any important advancement exams.

(2) A lack of study materials affects students' general knowledge of their culture, and builds barriers to students' pursuit of further education . Every year, there is an exam that every sixth and ninth grade student must take. The sixth grade students take the Middle School Entrance Exam, and the ninth grade students take the High School Entrance Exam. The Tibetan parts of this exam focus on Tibetan grammar, history and general knowledge.

Students from Dongdatan County School generally have lower results in these exams, with the lack of extra-curricular educational materials being the most significant cause. There is a Tibetan Primary School in Dongdatan County Town, which has a broad selection of Tibetan textbooks and stories. Teachers from Dongdatan School conducted a comparative exam in 2000, and found that the other primary school students' Tibetan level is higher than the junior middle school students in Dongdatan School. The students' level of general, cultural, historical and local knowledge suffers due to the lack of outside educational materials.

I was the only student among 35 classmates who passed the County Town Middle school entrance exam. I found, when I entered middle school that I was the only student that didn't know the relationship between Tome Sambozha (the person who invented written Tibetan), and Shangzan Gambo (the 32 nd Tibetan King of Tibet) was. This is an integral chapter in Tibetan history. It seemed to me on that first day of Middle School that I had missed out on a world of important cultural knowledge.

(3) Class time cannot prepare the students for their future learning in more advanced schools. During class time, teachers in Dongdatan School mainly focus on the material in prescribed textbooks, which gives students a narrow scope with which to view their world. After class, the students have no extra reading material, reference or otherwise. This deficiency is something that the students have expressed vocally.

(4) Ancestors' illiteracy and teachers' text teaching cannot help the students' history and culture learning. For many Tibetan students, cultural history is a neglected facet of their education. This is partly because in many cases, they are unable to learn about their own history inside the home. This is due to the fact that there is a high level of illiteracy in their parents' generation, in both Tibetan and Chinese. Students are faced with a cultural and educational chasm between theirs and their parents' generation.

Inside the classroom, most teachers focus only on teaching their students basic Tibetan reading and writing. Without extra resources, both students and teachers are left without the means to further their own cultural or intellectual education further.

(5) A lack of study materials causes the school enrollment to decrease. The school doesn't own dictionaries, thesauruses or other language texts. This puts the students at a severe disadvantage. Once the students reach Middle School age, many of them want to go to the County Town Tibetan Middle School for a better education. The general opinion of these students is that Dongdatan cannot adequately prepare them for the High School Entrance Exam, which occurs in the third year of study. Because they have already received a sub-standard education in Dongatan School throughout their primary school years, they are rarely accepted to other middle schools. In turn, the school is not a student's first educational preference.

(6) Having no access to a library also concerns the teachers at Dondatan School. With no reference books to aid their research, they find it difficult to prepare interesting and varied lessons. Without books as inspiration for themselves, it is hardly surprising that their level of enthusiasm also drops, along with the standard of their teaching. This is one of the biggest problems facing teachers in the area.

(7) Having no English study materials lowers the levels of English teaching and learning at Dongdatan School. Since 2005, English has also been taught in this school, from Grade Three onwards. Both the teachers and the students learn English from the beginner level. Having only textbooks and no supplementary reading materials to learn from, students are essentially taught a language that they can't use (there being few English speakers to practice with in the area).

In a competitive society where English is becoming an ever more important asset, students are left at a serious disadvantage compared to the County Town schools where more teaching and learning resources are supplied. If Dongdatan students had access to reference books, stories and other reading materials, it is almost certain that their English level would improve dramatically. Reading Tibetan and English stories would also give students the chance to spend constructive and valuable leisure time .

Project Goal and Benefits:

The ultimate goal of this project is to buy 670 Tibetan and English books for Dongdatan School, which in turn will provide the following benefits:

•  If the school's resources improve, this will lead to better teaching and learning experiences for all involved. The school will gain a higher reputation, and thus more students in the area will consider pursuing their education at the school past grade six. This in turn will improve the general standard of living in the entire community.

•  Students could frequent the library to read after classes, thus constructively using their leisure time.

•  The students' scores on the Middle School and High School Entrance Exams would improve, due to their gaining a more developed understanding of general knowledge and Tibetan history. This would give them access to higher levels of education that would otherwise be unattainable.

•  The students will no longer be ignorant of their traditional and local culture.

•  Schoolteachers would no longer worry about letting their students leave the school after 10 years without learning anything about their own culture, if they could choose from a hundred Tibetan books to teach their students.

•  Both the students and the teachers could improve their English if there were a place where they could easily find English teaching resources and study materials. This would lead to greater self-confidence and higher job prospects for the students in later life. English is the gateway to all levels of higher education in China beyond high school.

•  More resources for teachers would stimulate them to be proactive inside and outside of the classroom. This would result in a more motivated and inspired class.

Steps of the Project:

1. Contact the school leader on the phone and discuss the urgent needs with him. (Completed)
2.   Hold a meeting with the schoolteachers to plan the project (Identifying what kinds of books are needed, and who will be responsible for the sustainability of the project). (Completed)
3.   Contact the bookstore and find out the price of the books. (Completed)
4.   Find out the transportation fee. (Completed)
5.   Write project proposal. (Completed)
6.   Secure donor funding.
7.   Purchase the books from One Plus One Bookstore and Foreign Bookstore, in Xining City, Qinghai Province.
8.   Transport the books.
9.   Distributed the books to the school.
10.   Go to the school and interview the teachers, students; visit some families and interview some parents to check the progress this project has brought.
11. Take pictures
12. Write the final report.
13. Send the final report and the pictures, and the receipts.

Timeframe:
The implementation of the project will take three days:

Detailed Budget :
The prices of the following books were checked by Dawa Drolma, at One Plus One Bookstore (Tibetan) and the Foreign Bookstore (English) in Xining City. These quotes are recent and are therefore accurate.

Transportation:
Xining—Huazangsi: 750rmb
Huazangsi—Dongdatan: 300rmb

Local contribution
Dongdatan School will provide the project with an empty classroom, 20 desks (to be used as shelves) and 15 chairs. This room would function as a library.

Under the supervision of a teacher, the students will volunteer their time to set up the library. A teacher and two students will also volunteer their time as librarians.

Total requested from Donor organization: 10,126.05rmb (1265.8 US Dollars)
Total local contribution: 14,400 rmb

Sustainability:
One teacher named Danjian and two students (one male and one female) have been chosen as the main librarians. They will keep the library clean and tidy and will also be responsible for making sure the books are not torn or otherwise spoilt. Teaching staff will devise a management policy for the use of the library to ensure that students and teachers are getting the most out of the facility. A rotating panel of teachers will review this management strategy monthly. These measures will ensure that the book project will continue to help Dongdatan School for at least 15 years.

Additional Information:
Dawa Drolma has successfully completed two small-scale development projects in Tianzhu County. In 2002, she completed a second-hand clothing project organized by Sue Bishop at the British Consulate in Shanghai. More than 100 people benefited from this project. In 2004, she helped more than 350 people in Hualang Village, Dongdatan Township, by bringing 50 solar cookers to them, funded by the Canada Fund. In 2005 and 2006, she co-managed two second-hand clothing projects under supervision of Dr. Kevin Stuart. Students from the English Training Program at Qinghai Education College, Xining, distributed clothes. In total, more than 10,000 people from areas all over Tibet benefited from this project. It was hailed as one of the most wide-reaching and successful development projects in the area ever undertaken.