By Adele Hulse

In 1983 Owen Cole came back from Sera Monastery in South India with photos of little monks with great pustulous scabby wet sores all over their heads. “We have to do something,” he said. One morning after that I woke up knowing that I was going to run The Bleeding Hearts Charity Ball annually for five years and give the money to health and social welfare projects.

The first year we sank a borewell at the Sera Je School. No more head scabs. Next we funded the Sew Semiti Leprosy Patients, a community on the Delhi fringe. Housing, clothing, teachers’ and doctors’ salaries, medical supplies, sewing machines, bedding and a color television set were provided.

Manipat in Madhya Pradesh is the most remote Tibetan settlement in India. There FPMT built and staffed a health and hygiene education program. At Jampa Ling, north of Pokhara, Nepal, we built 27 toilets with septic tanks and soak pits.

The Australian government agency AusAID granted dollar for dollar subsidies on all projects except at Sera: exclusive communities are ineligible. Matched funding for Manipat and Jampa Ling projects was raised by Melbourne’s Tibet Welfare Group and Artists for Human Rights in Brisbane.

Funds for our current project AUD$38,000 (US$24,500) came from His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s Australian visit in 1996 with matching funds from AusAID. FPMT has built 76 toilets, sunk two borewells, installed two pumps in pump houses and built a source tank at Birand Chaundra, settlements three hours’ drive from Dharamsala. This is the first sanitation for the community of 4,000, but more work is needed – and more funds.

There are no words to describe the special embrace in which so many of us hold the Tibetan people. First as Dharma teachers who gave purpose to our lives. Then the ocean of the red-robed Sangha – or rather what was left of the ocean. Then Tibetan families, the lay people – or what was left of the refugees after dying of tuberculosis in road camps before the permanent settlements were set up in the 1960s.

Since that time, many of these have remained unsanitised and with seriously insufficient water. Today, diarrheal and skin conditions represent 50% of the disease burden in the Tibetan population in India. Infant mortality is 38 per 1,000 live births and the communities have 64% of their water requirements.

From October this year Save The Children Foundation UK will cease funding the Department of Health of the Tibetan government-in-exile. They were for many years its major sponsor and the change is due to STC’s strategic redeployment.

Please, next time you turn on a tap, consider. Could you spare a donation to water and sanitation projects in Tibetan settlements?

Send your donation to FPMT Australia Limited. Either fax your credit card details to (61) (3) 9486 3022 or send a check in Australian dollars. Make check payable to FPMT Australia Limited: 20 Broomfield Avenue, Alphington, VIC 3078, Australia. Receipts are available on request; however, we regret that donations to these projects are not tax deductible.

Further information is available from:

Adèle Hulse, Director Overseas Aid, FPMT Australia Limited,

Tel/fax: (61) (3) 9596 6141. Email: 100246.1371@compuserve.com