Jigme Gyaltsen
and His Welfare School

　　The nature bestows towering snow mountains, torrential Yellow River, and vast prairie upon people living and working industriously on this land with generosity. The people here are living peacefully, optimistically and confidently on this wonderful land generation after generation. Rich natural resources nurture good people, and Jigme Gyaltsen was born here in an ordinary herdsman family in Daofu Township, Machen County, Golok Prefecture in the southeast of Qinghai Province, on December 15th, 1965.

　　Jigme Gyaltsen is not someone as reincarnated living Buddha, or high-level senior official, or a millionaire, but rather a monk and modern Tibetan education reformist with long-term vision, who devoted himself to education and reform on Tibetan education. His is beneficent, intelligent, and highly respected.

　　Although Jigme Gyaltsen came across with many difficulties while he went to school as a child from a poor family, his intelligence, industriousness and curiosity for knowledge helped him overcome all the obstacles and got a bachelor’s degree from Qinghai University for Nationalities in 1983. Then due to his hunger for knowledge, he decided to become a monk in monastery to learn from wise monks. He studied in many famous Buddhist colleges such as Lambrang Lamasery Buddhist College, Qinghai Buddhist College, Ragya Monastery of Golok, and China Senior Buddhist College of Beijing. He studied most of the classical works in Tibetan culture, famous for its coverage of five large disciplines (Da Ming) and five small disciplines (Xiao Ming), and added to his knowledge both traditional Tibetan culture and modern science and technology. When he graduated from China Senior Buddhist College in 1990, many schools offered him jobs as a teacher with high salary, but he refused because he was so in love with his hometown and the people there, and had decided to go back.

　　Through his own experience, he knew the charm and importance of scientific and cultural knowledge. Although Jigme Gyaltsen came across with many difficulties while he went to school as a child from a poor family, his intelligence, industriousness and curiosity for knowledge helped him overcome all the obstacles and got a bachelor’s degree. Then due to his hunger for knowledge, he decided to become a monk in monastery to learn from wise monks. He studied most of the classical works in Tibetan culture, famous for its coverage of five large disciplines and five small disciplines, and added to his knowledge both traditional Tibetan culture and modern science and technology. Most of the Tibetan communities are located in remote areas, with residents scattering, and its education sector lags behind. He worried about this situation, and came back to his hometown despite high salary offered to him in Beijing. Since 1994, he organized the first training program combining traditional Tibetan culture with modern science and technology in the dormitory of his own monastery. With his hard work and support of local government and private organizations home and abroad, the school kept growing in the past twelve years and has become a standardized occupational school with unique feature and recognition in China and foreign countries. It was renamed Jigme Gyaltsen Welfare School of Golok Prefecture, Qinghai Province. The school covers 3,000 m2. Studying in the school are 586 students from all over the country including Tibet, Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai. There are 28 teac

　　Despite current achievement, Jigme Gyaltsen saw no satisfaction. He pays special attention to education of girls in Tibetan areas. He said: “Education of girls is also education of mothers, which is the fundamental education for human beings.” For a long term, education of girls is a weak link in education sector in Tibetan areas. Jigme Gyaltsen spared no efforts in seeking social sponsorship for developing this link. His unselfishness and vision touched and encouraged people home and abroad. They began to contribute money and efforts to help develop this education sector. The Prairie Talent Girls’ School was founded on November 25, 2004. Meanwhile, sponsored by Trace Foundation of USA, he invited cheese experts from US, Italy, Nepal and Switzerland to help develop yak cheese with unique features produced by a combination of traditional Tibetan techniques and advanced foreign technology. In November, 2000, Snowland Treasure Co., Ltd., a company under the school, was established. Its product, the yak cheese produced in plateau, was well received by domestic and foreign consumers. It was over-demanded and was always sold out soon after put on the shelf.

　　As the sutra says, “seek not self-comfort, but hope all the people away from suffering”. Jigme Gyaltsen is fulfilling, in his own life, all the commitment expressed in this sentence which was adopted by kind people as motto over thousands of years.