December 2001 – February 2002
Australian Glenn Fawcett is program manager for White Lotus Sponsorship Program, founded by
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche in 1993 to help low-income Tibetans educate their children.
Formerly secretary of Rinpoche’s organization, Siddhartha’s Intent, versatile Glenn also worked in a
music theater by night and on a fruit farm by day in Australia. Then he went to India (“fabulous for
developing patience”) where he resurrected and ran a pilgrimage tour company, Yana Tours, for a
couple of years.
White Lotus began as a secular project in the field of social welfare. Rinpoche felt that Tibetan lamas had done a lot for their monasteries but needed to do much for their people, that the paramita of generosity wasn’t being practiced by building up one’s own monastery and, of course, the attendant reputation that comes with that. He felt compelled as a Buddhist to practice generosity with a pure motivation and White Lotus was born of that. Since then we have implemented a whole range of education-based initiatives in Tibetan communities and have begun working in the slums of Delhi…